TPN Chat: The Rise of Agentic AI in the Travel Advisor Industry — with Scott of Cruise Planners

August 12th, 2026 – In this episode of TPN Chat, Andy Ogg welcomes back longtime industry friend Scott, VP of Strategic Development at Cruise Planners and the voice behind Travel Professional News’ beloved Simply Sales with Scott column, which has been running strong for nearly six years.

 

With over 40 years in the travel industry — from Club Med G.O. in the early ’80s, to one of the very first Cruise Holidays franchisees, to president of Nexion, to leadership roles at Avoya Travel, and now eight years with Cruise Planners — Scott brings a rare, panoramic view of how travel advisors have weathered every big disruption the business has thrown at them. And in this conversation, he takes on the biggest one yet: AI.

 

Andy admits up front he’s not exactly the AI’s biggest fan (he calls them “the robots”), and Scott meets him in the middle with a healthy dose of both excitement and realism. The two dig into agentic AI and what it’s about to do to marketing, why suppliers and advisors are going to have to start coordinating campaigns instead of stacking them on top of each other, and the question every advisor needs to be asking themselves right now: what can I do that AI can’t?

 

Scott’s answer is refreshingly analog — go back to Main Street, join the chamber of commerce, hang out at the library, chase down groups (yes, even the garden club of Poughkeepsie), and pick up the phone. Because in-person connection closes deals at rates AI simply can’t touch, and groups remain one of the few things suppliers and algorithms can’t do for themselves.

 

The conversation also gets into what to actually look for in a host agency in the AI era — from who owns their own technology (spoiler: less than half of hosts do) to why integration is the real story, not just the “we have AI” checkbox. Plus a great historical throwback on how airline commission caps in the ’90s permanently split the industry into corporate and leisure camps, and why a similar shakeout may be coming again.

 

Whether you’re AI-curious, AI-cautious, or somewhere in between, this is one of those episodes that leaves you with a clearer head about where the business is heading — and a longer to-do list of things worth doing this week.

 

Tune in now — and don’t forget to subscribe for more TPN Chat episodes built for the modern travel advisor.

 

 

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Andy Ogg: My name is Andy Ogg, and I’ll be facilitating a fun discussion about travel, travel advisors, and everything in between today with my good friend Scott. You can visit TravelProfessionalNews.com, FindAHostTravelAgency.com, and HomeBasedTravelAgent.com to learn more about what we offer for the travel advisor.

But today we’re really going to be talking about what is happening in today’s culture, today’s world, today’s travel. Scott, thank you for joining me.

 

Scott Koepf: Absolutely, Andy, and great to see you. It has been a long time indeed. I’ve been toiling in this industry for over 40 years, and I’ve known your mom, I think, that entire time. It’s been great to watch your family legacy continue, and I love what you guys do for the industry and for advisors. So it’s a pleasure to be here.

 

Andy Ogg: It is my pleasure to have you. Forty years — my gosh. Can you tell me a little bit about where all that 40 years is taking? I know a few of the chapters, but give me the 30,000-foot view.

 

Scott Koepf: Well, I’ll skip the prison incarceration times. But other than that — no, seriously, it’s been a great journey.

I actually started in the travel industry with Club Med as a GO back in the early 80s. So that will give you an idea of how long I’ve been playing in this business. But that gave me the taste for the business, and I came back and, about a couple of years later, bought one of the very first franchises in the travel industry at the time, a company called Cruise Holidays. I was the fifth franchisee with them — one of the first cruise-only travel agencies in the country. At the time that was considered radical and revolutionary, because in those days about 78% of all business done by travel advisors was airline business. And we basically turned our backs to that and focused on the cruise side, which was extremely unusual.

Then, through a number of stories, my wife and I went to work on board cruise ships for a while, then came back and ended up working for Cruise Holidays. We grew it to well over 100 agencies and one of the largest cruise sellers in the country at that point. I became president and CEO, and then went back to being a franchisee again and ran a franchise for a few years up in Northern California.

From there, I did a training program for Princess Cruise Lines called the Ultimate Cruise Sales Seminar and continued the speaking gig. Eventually, through a number of other host agencies I worked with as well as franchise organizations, I landed at Sabre, ran the organization known as Nexion as president of that organization as well as a consortium. Then I was with Avoya Travel for a number of years on the more online side — still a host agency — and about eight years ago I ended up with Cruise Planners.

And while I don’t want this to be an overall commercial, I will just say that the reason I joined them is I thought they had the best program in the industry. I’m here eight years later and I still think that’s a fact. Of course, people could say, “well, you’re paid to say that now.” But the truth is I’m thrilled to be with Cruise Planners. It’s a great organization. And for me it’s kind of full circle, because I’m coming back to the franchise side of the business — which has a great advantage to those that are taking advantage of our brand and what we do.

So it’s been a long and varied career. But my focus has always been to help travel advisors be more successful. Most of my career has been on training — most of it focused on teaching sales and marketing in particular. I do a lot of that with Cruise Planners, but I also do it just generally across the industry, as we’ll talk about today, because I’m passionate about helping all travel advisors become more successful.

 

Andy Ogg: And for those of you who don’t know — I feel like we should clip in a “this is not a paid advertisement” somewhere here — but Scott is a contributing editor to TravelProfessionalNews.com with his Simply Sales with Scott article series that has spanned almost six years now. They are really great, inspirational, powerful, and useful topics, tasks, and skills that you can implement into your sales techniques for your clients. So if you’re ever interested, check that out on TravelProfessionalNews.com.

Scott, that is an impressive career, and I can’t believe you’ve been with Cruise Planners for eight years now. It doesn’t feel like that long — and I think that’s how I know I’m getting older. And I can’t see anymore. So the years just keep flying by.

 

Scott Koepf: It does go fast. It’s been a great place to land, and I’m certainly thrilled I’m part of the team in green, as we call ourselves. It really has been the perfect place for me to end up, and I’m thrilled with what we’re doing and what we’re seeing in the industry.

And of course, through all of those times there have been ups and downs — not just with Cruise Planners, but throughout the 40 years, there have been agency challenges. There have been all kinds of pundits and prophets who have said travel advisors would be no more, that they’d be replaced by the Internet, they’d be replaced by AI, they’d be replaced by this, that, and the other thing. And yet here we still are. But those challenges do exist, and we have to think about how to market through them and how to sell through them. That’s always been my focus — to help these advisors through the challenges that do exist in our industry.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s a very true statement, and a perfect segue into one of the hot topics I really want to make sure we talk about today. And that is the word you can never get away from in today’s times: AI.

It is everywhere. It is affecting every industry. I’ll be honest with you — I’m not a huge fan of it. I have a very heavy discernment of the robots and what they can do. I call them robots, and I am scared of them. But they are here, and they are changing everything.

As a travel advisor today, in today’s market, what do you think and feel and what do you see coming down the line for the home-based or storefront travel advisor? What’s your feel about the AI model?

 

Scott Koepf: A great comment, and I appreciate your honesty. In some ways, all of us have this combination of both excitement over what AI can bring and does bring, as well as trepidation over what exactly this is going to do to our industry, our business, and maybe even our world.

 

Andy Ogg: A healthy fear.

 

Scott Koepf: Yeah, I think a healthy fear is okay to have.

 

Andy Ogg: I definitely do.

 

Scott Koepf: So here’s my thought. At the end I’ll say that I do not think AI is going to be the replacement of travel advisors and that suddenly travel advisors will be gone. But I will believe that it is going to adjust who survives and who thrives in the future more dramatically because of AI than maybe other scenarios that certainly will always affect us.

And by that I mean — the standard answer we hear a lot is that we won’t be replaced by AI, but you might be replaced by travel advisors who understand and use AI. I think there is truth to that. We can’t ignore it. In some ways that line is the classic line that is borrowed from when the Internet came out. It won’t replace, won’t replace. But the truth is that advisors who completely ignored the Internet and did not embrace it in any way, shape, or form probably aren’t in the industry anymore. Most advisors learned how to use it and learned the approach of using the Internet in various ways. Obviously there are those who put their entire business model based on selling and marketing on the Internet. Those still exist today. We use “OTA” as the abbreviation for those who really put 100% of their effort over just, primarily, marketing and doing transactions online. But everybody had the ability, and still has the ability, of using the Internet.

Now, take that one step further and you’ve got the AI side of this, which is really the Internet on steroids. It can do incredible things. And what I hear a lot is, “well, here’s how to make sure you take advantage of it,” and we get a few little suggestions — “oh, have it write your emails, have it do a few different things you can integrate in. It’ll make your emails prettier, and it can even remind you of some things.” I think that is, in some ways, the tip of the iceberg of what is to come down the pike.

One of the big trends in AI, as I’m sure you know, is the agentic part — and it’s kind of funny we use that same term in our industry of agent, although that’s being replaced by advisor. But the agentic side, to me, is going to have the biggest impact on marketing.

Just as a quick summary: agentic basically means it almost moves to a one-on-one type of environment. If I know that Andy is my customer, I’ve got a certain amount of data on you — I’ve got your history, I’ve got information, I’ve got what you purchased. Then I start layering that in with other information — either you’ve told me what you’re interested in doing next, or third-party information I can gather. I can see what kind of car you drive, where you live, how big your mortgage is. It’s all that information that we wish people didn’t know. But you put all that together, which we do today, and most good consortiums will take a lot of that data and kind of determine, “well, we think this is a good thing to market to you.” But it’s still kind of done on a mass basis. It basically sorts a database down to a smaller number, but it certainly isn’t customized to Andy.

Whereas the agentic AI program that’s coming down the pike — and I think this is still in its infancy, but this is what the eventual AI world is going to do — is that we can feed all that information into “Andy” and then we can bias it to say, “and you know what, these are the particular products that I really want Andy to buy.” Maybe it’s because of profitability, maybe it’s because I’m most comfortable selling that particular product, whatever it is. So that suddenly the marketing going out to Andy is not only going to be the right media, but it’s going to look the way that Andy likes it. It’s going to talk about the products that not only Andy’s interested in, but I’m interested in selling. And all of that is done behind the scenes automatically. So you can imagine what time and effort that takes off an advisor in the marketing world.

Now, that being said, here’s the caution that goes with it. That brilliance of marketing is coming. It is coming. There is no question. And every industry is going to be moving in that direction, including our own industry — including those you compete with, the suppliers themselves. They’re going to spend a lot of money and a lot of time — if Andy has been on that product — making sure that Andy is getting the exact kind of marketing that particular supplier wants him to get.

So here are a couple of takeaways I’ll take from that. One is I think one of the evolutions that’s going to happen — and the advisors who can start to move on this faster — is that there’s going to have to be more coordination between supplier marketing and advisor marketing. Because in truth, the two are completely separated. In the retail world, we market one way. We’ve got multiple suppliers. We drive out direct mail, emails, etc., across multiple suppliers in multiple ways. We use that data of past history and behavior and other things to try to direct that.

But at the same time, you’ve got a supplier — if not multiple suppliers — marketing to Andy and making different offers at different times and different products, and they’re laying on top of each other to the same customer with kind of the same products, but different suppliers. And it’s very confusing. And we’re going to kill the golden goose. Whereas if we can come together and really coordinate that marketing — using the agentic approach of what really is going to resonate with Andy specifically, one at a time — the door is going to be open.

But again, the challenge is the suppliers and a few other companies are going to spend a lot of money in developing that kind of an approach to marketing. And you want to make sure you are with a company that is thinking through that. That can be at the host level like ourselves at Cruise Planners, or it can be another host. But if you start talking about this and they don’t know what you’re talking about when you’re talking about agentic marketing, you’d better start looking. Because that’s where the change is going to happen. It’s not going to be helping with creativity and making flyers look pretty and all that kind of stuff. That’s all available to you. It’s that next level that’s going to change the world and the marketing world.

The last thing I’ll say is that kind of changes the marketing side. The other thing that I would step back and make a recommendation to advisors today is: that is happening. There is going to be this major embracing of varying elements of what AI can do. And the biggest question you need to ask yourself is: what can you do as an advisor that AI can’t? That’s a really important question. Because today you can say, “well, I can send a nice email.” Well, AI can probably send a better one. “Well, I know that client really well.” Well, AI is going to learn that because of agentic marketing before you’re going to, even more than you can. And even if you can learn it now, if you’ve got 200 clients, how are you going to learn that across 200 and keep track of it? It becomes incredibly difficult.

So you’ve got to step back and say, “what can I do that AI can’t?” And to me there are a couple of answers to that. In all cases it comes down to people. What I can do that AI can’t is meet face-to-face. What they can’t do — I’ll get squishy here — is give a hug. They can’t really connect with another human. And that’s where that opportunity is.

So how are you going to find more opportunities to do that? I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is I wrote an article — I think it was in your publication a little while ago — and it’s one that I’ve really talked more about probably since that article. It was called “Return to Main Street.” The concept being that 20 years ago, plus or minus — again, before the advent of the Internet — every travel agency in the country was on Main Street. Basically everybody was there. It had the exposure. Everybody was down there. And as we know, there are very few in the entire country left on Main Street. Everybody went home-based. Everybody went through host agencies. The whole market changed, which is fine. But what we forgot is there’s still a lot of traffic of people walking around Main Street. And there are ways to take advantage of Main Street without having to sign a lease and be in a location there. In other words, getting exposure through the stores that are there. Getting exposure by just taking over empty windows that are sitting down there. Doing deals with the jewelry stores and the dry cleaners and everybody down on Main Street. Because what you don’t have as a home-based advisor is traffic. You don’t have exposure — unless you’re in a weird neighborhood and you’ve got people driving by your house every day and you’ve got a big sign out in front of your house. Well, you’d probably break some laws by doing that.

 

Andy Ogg: Except for the Amazon delivery guy — he does frequent our neighborhood a lot. I don’t know if he’s planning on a cruise anytime soon, though.

 

Scott Koepf: He’s the guy, right? He’s the guy who definitely knows the neighborhood better than anything. And he might know you’re in the business just because of the kinds of packages you’re getting. But at the end of the day, you need that kind of exposure. That’s exposure beyond social media, beyond where AI is going to live — it’s where the people are.

The same advice I would give — and if you’re not already doing it, that I would highly recommend that you jump into — is groups. Because both the cruise lines and tour operators and all these that have great sales teams, they still don’t have the bandwidth to go out and talk to the garden club of Poughkeepsie and convince the garden club of Poughkeepsie to go out and do a group. And that’s the one thing travel advisors can do that both the suppliers can’t do and AI can’t do. So chasing down groups, creating groups — and, of course, as we all know, groups create an annuity. They create great peripheral business that comes from that. So there’s huge profitability in that. The challenge, of course, is that it takes a sales skill of going out and calling on those groups, knowing you’re going to get turned down by most. But all you need is a couple, and you’re going to be golden through the next AI version.

So that was a really long answer to a very short question, Andy.

 

Andy Ogg: I think that is the exact type of answer we need right now. I agree with you entirely.

I really do think the AI model is going to — COVID thinned out the herd as we went through that in the travel industry. When there was no travel, we couldn’t even — I don’t think you could even go to the airport at that time. Now we’re at this point where there’s a herd competing with you, and that AI is scary because, as you very well said, agentic is scary. It’s amazing what it can do, and it’s learning so fast.

It’s going to be a challenge for every advisor to embrace that. We’ve been doing a series on tools and how to use AI to better your business — creating emails, automating workflows, making sure you grab every lead out there and have the follow-ups, asking for reviews, asking how the trip was. All of those things are going to be so utilized by an AI model. Right now, it’d be great for every agent to implement that in their business.

But the reality is, I think you’re right. Going back to Main Street, going back to shaking hands, going to your city commerce, going to the library and hanging out — there’s a lot to be said for the in-person meeting. And I think there’s a monstrous opportunity because no matter what, even though the cars drive themselves now, they’re not going to be talking to you like a real person. And that’s the reality facing our industry in the advisor role today.

 

Scott Koepf: It is. And it reminds me in some ways of something I’ve been teaching for many, many years, and that is: don’t hide behind email, and don’t hide behind social media. I think it’s happened generally across our entire world, let alone the travel industry.

I still tell folks that really the vast majority — and I’m talking probably 80 to 90% of all business done, and if you exclude hotel and air, so we’re talking cruises, tours, FIT trips — it happens on the phone. There has to be a conversation on the phone. There’s got to be a phone call that happens. And a lot of times it’s, “well, I’ll just send them an email. I’ll just send them an email.” The truth is that’s not going to do the trick in the long run — and it’s going to do the trick even less when AI really does get to the point that it can write better emails than we can and be more on top of things than we can.

You’ve got to do everything to connect with people. If you can do it in person — there are studies that show the closing rate goes up by 60% if you can meet somebody in person versus even on the phone. But the study is even higher in terms of the fact that you’ve got to at least have that phone call. That connection, that personal connection, is the one thing AI can’t do. You want to do everything you can to capitalize on that.

 

Andy Ogg: I couldn’t agree more. That’s really good information. I appreciate that.

Now I’m going to ask you a question. We run FindAHostTravelAgency.com, and we installed an AI bot on there to help people with questions like, “what host agency offers XYZ?” A question I just saw popping up in the past couple weeks was, “what host agency offers AI tools?” I’m going to have to create a database for that. That’s going to be my next week’s challenge.

But the reality is, what do you see? I want to put a shout out here to Cruise Planners — I know you guys have been on the forefront of a lot of these things. What have you provided for franchise owners regarding the tools they can use today?

 

Scott Koepf: That’s a great question. I really do think we were the first to integrate AI into our technology. The first part of that question, I think, comes down to not just, does a host agency offer it, because the first question is: do they have their own technology? And quite honestly, less than half of the host agencies actually have their own technology. Most of them outsource to a third party and don’t have control over it. So if AI is happening, it’s not even the host that’s making the decision as to how it’s being integrated. That kind of takes away — even though they might say, “oh, our third party is involved with it” — well, that means they’re kind of deferring off what I think is one of the most important elements of the business: not only just technology, but that integration of AI. So you have to start with, what is the technology that any host agency offers? Do they control it? And then, what are they investing into it to make it different, unique, and top of the industry?

We were one of the first to actually integrate AI. When we first integrated it, it was the simple stuff. And it’s the kind of thing that, again, you have to be careful of the answer of, “oh yes, we integrate AI.” Well, does that mean you just tell somebody to go over to Claude or ChatGPT and then do something and pull it back into your system? That’s not integrated. Now I’ve got to take extra steps. I’ve got to go somewhere else to do this.

Integration is probably the most important part of technology, I think, over the last 10 years. In other words, I can go out and buy 17 different software programs that all do different things, and each one might be great — but if I have to re-enter the data into every single one of those to get to the right answers I need and try to create the right itinerary, the right invoice, and the right CRM system, then those are all different systems that don’t talk to each other. I’ve actually taken away what the major benefit of technology is, which is to save me time. If it takes too much time, it doesn’t matter if AI is involved or not.

So integration is, I’ll say, if I look at an order — number one, do they own technology and are they investing in that technology? Number two, is it fully integrated across all the functionalities that a good travel advisor needs? You can make the list of what it needs — and then, are they all integrated? So I only have to enter Andy’s name once, and now it’s in my CRM, but I also create the invoice, I create the itinerary. And now, is AI integrated in that?

Ours is fully integrated in a couple of ways. That has been part of our system for a while now in terms of assisting with any editing, helping write information, taking data, summarizing it. All of that is built into our system.

You mentioned your chatbot. We have that built into our system. We have Ask Max. My shirt is my little logo here — Max is the name of our technology system. So we have an Ask Max. In the old days, that was a search bar. You’d pull up a name and it would send you various places. Now it’s like talking to a human. You’re putting in there standard language to get to whatever you’re looking for. That’s now pervasive across our entire system.

The other thing, as I mentioned earlier, is that we are on the forefront of integrating AI in the more agentic way that I was just talking about. That’s what’s so important. Now, that’s not something you can just flip a switch and have that change the way you go to market. That’s still in its infancy, really, across marketing in general — but in our industry in particular. The important thing is, again, we’ve got a team. I think we have over seven full-time AI people working for us right now. That’s their only job — the integration of AI into everything that we do, with one point in mind: to simplify the life of a travel advisor that’s under our umbrella, and then to not only simplify but make them more efficient at selling. And obviously, profitability goes right along with that.

So for us, it’s that growth not only within the systems themselves — the itinerary building, all of that has AI integrated — but it’s that agentic side that we are building behind the scenes that is going to have huge impact down the road.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s amazing. That’s really cool. When you look at Cruise Planners as owning a franchise, is that all included in the franchise model that you offer?

 

Scott Koepf: Great question, and thanks for asking. Our model — people sometimes look, “ooh, a franchise, I’d rather do a host agency.” And there’s no doubt you can join a host for a lot less money than we are. Unless, I’ll say, you already have a book of business. And if you’ve got a book of business, quite frankly, we’re probably less expensive than almost every other host out there, because obviously we’re interested in bringing you in if you already have success in the industry and you already know how to sell and know how to market. But we can help you with that, and we can help you with your technology.

The answer to your question, quite simply, is yes. While there is a monthly fee, and there is a split — we call it royalty, that’s the term used in the franchise world — but it’s competitive with every other host agency. And the beauty is that you get a phenomenal technology package, so you’re not having to pay a third party for 14 different technology items that you need — this, that, etc. It’s all included in one completely integrated package. Plus you get all the other marketing support, and you get the support of the coaches that we have that are full time. And you get a brand that gives you credibility, and that’s really important in today’s world.

Most host agencies work behind the scenes. I used to run a very good one — there are some great ones out there. The truth is that you’re still “Fred’s Travel.” Over time, consumers are going to say, “well, why would I work with Fred’s Travel?” Most consortia and most host agencies, you can’t give them their names because those are not public-facing names. With Cruise Planners — and certainly Cruise Planners is not a McDonald’s, we’re not a household name where suddenly people are going to be lined up outside your garage because Cruise Planners is there — but it gives an immediate credibility that you’re part of a billion-dollar company. You can tell people that we’re part of a billion-dollar company that is one of the largest in the United States of selling vacation travel. So there are huge advantages in that.

Yes, it is an all-inclusive price. And for those already in the industry, it’s actually probably a lot less money than you think it is, and with a lot more benefits when you compare us against the other options that are out there.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s great information. That’s awesome.

Let me ask you this — I don’t know what time we’re at, but as you look forward, where do you see travel in 10 years? Do you see more travel advisors, less travel advisors, a thinner pot, or what do you see in 10 years from today?

 

Scott Koepf: It’s hard to predict 10 years, because 10 years ago I didn’t think AI was ever real, and I’m pretty sure The Matrix wasn’t real. But now I’m starting to wonder a little bit.

And I agree — you mentioned a little earlier that COVID tended to thin the ranks. But the truth is the ranks are starting to grow again, and they’re growing under kind of a different umbrella of what I’ll call the “instant travel advisor” kind of scenario. There are host agencies out there now that have tens of thousands of advisors, quote unquote, under their umbrella. Some are multi-level, some aren’t. Some of them have good reputations, some of them not so good. Some of them have great marketing, etc. I’m not disparaging them, but at a certain point there becomes the reality of, well, what benefit are they bringing, first of all, to the supplier? I think that’s going to go under review down the road. An organization that certainly might have tons and tons of members, at a certain point, is probably going to really take a lot of resources from a supplier, because they can’t have — they can’t be as trained and as knowledgeable on how to make a booking, how to service a booking. So they end up turning that back over to the supplier. Well, eventually the supplier is going to say, “this financial model doesn’t work. The reason we pay you a commission is that you’re supposed to do certain elements here.” So while it’s growing right now and it sounds great — and I look at some of these ads and, gee, I think I’ll sign up for an instant travel advisor too — but I know too much. I know the reality of this business.

I often teach that we have a very, very simple business. And then people kind of get a little upset at that. It’s like, “oh, it’s not that simple.” Well, it really is. As an advisor, we don’t have to keep the inventory, we don’t have spoilage, we don’t have what a lot of businesses have to deal with. It’s really pretty simple. Basically, you are bringing options of a vacation to a customer, hopefully finding the right one because you learned about them, and then presenting it to them, and hopefully they buy it. That’s relatively simple. The key to that is that simple does not mean easy. It is not an easy job, and it is not easy to be really good at this job. And yet when you look at a lot of the opportunities now that are thrown out through social media, it looks like the easiest thing in the world. “I throw up a website and I’m going to make millions of dollars while I sleep.” That concept has been around a long time. It’s just being marketed a little bit more aggressively now.

So there’s going to be some adjustment in the way that our supplier friends — who, by the way, are going to get better and better and better at marketing — they’re going to get more aggressive with their loyalty programs. Not necessarily with the goal of saying — because we know of one cruise line that went just a little too far this way — of, “yeah, we really just want to go direct, and the heck with all the distribution channel.” No one is going to do that on a purposeful basis to get rid of them. But what’s going to happen is they’re going to get better and better at their direct teams, and the direct marketing for those teams, so that you have to find the differentiator. What is going to make someone say, “well, why should I book through you versus book directly online?” We all have heard various answers for that, but those answers are going to change based on AI and based on what you bring to the market.

So there’s going to be a culling that will happen down the road. It’s going to happen more at the supplier level of them saying, “wait a minute, who are we paying these commissions to, and why, and what are they bringing to the table that we don’t do ourselves and do better?” And then there’s going to be choices between the advisors — of who’s got the better technology, who’s got the better marketing, who’s got the opportunities to really help you grow, versus, “okay, I got you in for 199 bucks, but yeah, you’re kind of on your own.” Well, those folks are going to have a real tough time surviving as time goes on.

 

Andy Ogg: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. What year was it when the airlines cut commissions?

 

Scott Koepf: Somewhere in the 80s. Yeah, actually in the early 90s, I think.

 

Andy Ogg: It’s definitely a shake-up to our industry — and I think it’s a really big opportunity for agents who are driven, motivated, and determined to really step up and find their next level. Because I think there’s a lot of levels left to go, as long as you’re driving after it.

 

Scott Koepf: Absolutely. And that’s a great analogy, too, of what happened then, because certainly there are a lot of agencies that went out of business because they said, “oh my God, they cut the commission.” As I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of travel agents at that point were making over 70% of their income based on just airline fares. So suddenly when that was cut, these guys were struggling. A lot of them turned to cruise, turned to tours, turned to vacation travel. And what happened was you literally had a division that occurred then which wasn’t as strong of a differentiation prior to that — that companies or agencies had to make the decision to become either corporate-focused or leisure-focused.

That still exists today. If you go through Travel Weekly’s Power List — those are the top agencies in the country, or in the world, really — you really see there are two lists. Actually, I’ve kind of asked them to do this, but they haven’t yet. Because you’ve got the vast majority of the top ones are corporate. You’ve got a couple of the big guys like the Expedias and Hotels.com and a couple of the guys that are way at the top that do “leisure,” but they do, again, a huge percent of the business is air and hotel. When you start getting down into it, you’ve either got a company that’s doing very well because they’re leisure-focused, or because they’re business-focused. There are very few that can do both and are doing both.

That decision in many cases happened because of that airline change. And what happened was those who were in the corporate side, which made almost all their money on air, had to completely change their model. They had to basically go out to their corporate clients and say, “okay, we’re still worth paying for, but this is how it’s going to be done.” There’s a service fee, a different fee in the way that we’re going to drive our business. The ones who did it and did it well have had incredible success — probably more success than they did when they were at the behest of the airlines and what commissions they paid.

So those changes will occur. And that’s the kind of change that, to your point, is going to happen again. I think it will get down to even the way compensation is going to be happening over the next 10 years. It’s going to change, because the suppliers are going to need different things. They’re going to be looking more from the marketing perspective than just somebody who can handle a transaction — because transactions can be easily automated. Marketing, not as much. And people can’t be at all.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s very true. It’s a really interesting time, and I really appreciate you taking the time. Before we kind of wind this up — Scott, is there anything you want to share that we didn’t get to touch on today?

 

Scott Koepf: I appreciate you giving me the time to jabber away here a little bit, and certainly to talk a little bit about Cruise Planners. And again, as I mentioned, it’s not purely a commercial. Obviously we want people to be successful no matter who they’re with. If you’re happy with your host and you love your host, great — you should stay there and do it well. But if you are looking, and looking for the best, obviously we’ve got something that, at very minimum, is worth a look.

One of the things I’ll suggest — and I think is really important for everyone who’s serious about this business — is look at all the relationships. One of the most important, if not the most important, is probably your host relationship, because the vast majority of all independent advisors now are under a host umbrella. Therefore that relationship is key. And then who they’re aligned with — which consortium they’re with — certainly adds to what they bring you. A lot of them rely entirely on those consortia in terms of their support mechanisms. So you want somebody who’s big enough on their own that they have their own support and their own programs, but also uses a great consortium behind them.

You really need to look. And again, my suggestion always is that, as much as everybody talks about suppliers and commission levels and splits, they all pretty much are going to end up at the same when it’s all said and done. The real differentiator is technology. You have to think that if you can just book two more cruises a month, or two more tours a month, or whatever it is, because you’ve got a better technology platform that helps you with your marketing and helps you with your efficiency, that’s a huge decision to make, and one that I would recommend that you make.

So I’d really focus. Again, we talked a lot about AI and a lot about what’s coming there. I’ll just lump that into the technology part of this. You want to be with a company that has a staff and a team that is looking at that on a daily basis, on how to make your world better and how to make you more efficient at selling the fabulous products that we have access to.

 

Andy Ogg: Well, it doesn’t sound like you guys are just making it better. It sounds like you kind of are running ahead of the ball a little bit. And today’s time is very important, because you don’t want to be caught behind and catching up.

 

Scott Koepf: That’s exactly right. And again, I always say: look, ask the suppliers who’s the best to align with, if you’re serious about the business. And I do say “serious about the business.” Someone who just wants to sell two cruises a year to their family — we’re probably not a good fit. You’re welcome to talk to us, but at the end of the day, we want people. Not necessarily that they have to be full time — we’ve got a lot of part-time folks, we’ve got folks who do this while they’re doing another job, etc. — but they’re setting themselves up for success long term because of what we’ve invested into our technology platform and everything else that we do from a coaching perspective and support.

The other thing is: we don’t compete with you. There is no one on our staff that sells travel. Not one person. And we’re not affiliated with a company that owns other travel agencies or other organizations that sell against you or have different channels. We’re it. We are 100% based on all sales happen through our franchisees, happen through our network.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s an important thing to look at also when you’re checking out hosts. You don’t want to compete more than you have to compete. You already compete with suppliers at some extent here. You don’t want to compete anymore. So I think that’s great.

And I’ll throw a little tidbit in here. Cruise Planners is one of our recommended host agencies on FindAHostTravelAgency.com. I highly recommend you visit the site, visit their profile. You can read hundreds of positive reviews from real travel advisors — not bots, not spam, but real people that we’ve actually met — and learn more about the program information they offer. It’s a great place to start your journey if you are just dipping your toes and debating. There’s a bunch of information on FindAHostTravelAgency.com regarding Cruise Planners. They were one of our recommended host agencies. I highly recommend you give them a look — and definitely look at our top host agencies for 2026, which they are in.

Scott, if there’s nothing left, man, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I thank you.

 

Scott Koepf: This is fun anytime. Obviously you can tell I love to jabber a little bit, but it’s always fun to just talk about this industry, which I love so much, and love the people in it, and I love what we offer people for lifetime memories. So it’s a great business. And again, my goal is that hopefully people are going to be as successful as they want to be with this business.

 

Andy Ogg: I think you have helped hundreds — I don’t know, I want to say hundreds, tens of thousands at least — travel advisors through your career find that success, grow their business, find their success. Whether it’s that part-time side hustle in the beginning and it turns into a full-time gig, or retirement. I’m sure a lot of people who may hear your voice today say, “yeah, thanks Scott, I appreciate that.”

 

Scott Koepf: You’re very welcome, and thank you, man. Fantastic.

 

Andy Ogg: Scott, man, I hope you and your family have a wonderful day. Thank you again for the time, and I really enjoyed talking with you.

 

Scott Koepf: Thanks, Andy.

 

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Interview conducted by Andy Ogg, Travel Professional News. Guest: Scott Koepf, Chief Strategy Officer — Cruise Planners.