In the 1990s, when online travel agencies began to rise alongside the democratization of the Internet, many travel industry observers believed that traditional travel agencies would disappear.
Jeff Willner, CEO of private investment company Navigatr Group, which last week closed its acquisition of Ensemble Travel Group, was among them.
Jeff Willner
Now, he’s a convert who thinks the consortium’s members can double their margins.
Willner has come around since working as a consultant at McKinsey & Co., where he advised airlines to invest in direct distribution channels to bypass the trade, and in 2006 founding a safari company that would eventually become Kensington Tours (now in the Navigatr portfolio) that didn’t work with travel advisors for its first two years.
Willner had what he described as an “epiphany” about the importance of working with an agent to have a better vacation experience.
“Because a great travel advisor is a professional,” he said. “They know what they’re doing. They know what they’re selling. They’ve traveled themselves. They’ve done training. They’re like any great professional, any great lawyer, any great doctor. And what they advise on is the thing that people want the most: Leisure time and experience is the No. 1 thing on the list for people to have.”
Today, Willner says he believes that advisors are “central” to leisure travel. Toronto-based Navigatr’s investments include the aforementioned Kensington Tours, host agency Travel Edge (No. 20 on Travel Weekly’s 2021 Power List), travel technology company TripArc and Ensemble.
And he also believes the technology developed by TripArc, combined with a professional travel advisor, can help Navigatr’s member agencies achieve better margins by at least 10 percentage points.
Navigatr made its biggest splash to date with its recent acquisition of Ensemble. But its interest in a consortium to complement its other investments has been ongoing. The company even considered an Ensemble acquisition…