MAST Travel Network earlier this month announced plans for a new division focused on an area of growing sales for its members: luxury. A committee comprising MAST members and employees will chart its course starting next month, once the consortium's board elections are completed. Senior editor Jamie Biesiada spoke with MAST's president, John Werner, about what members are selling, his vision for the luxury program and getting more buy-in from luxury suppliers.
John Werner
Q: Why are you starting a luxury division?
A: What we have seen happen over the past 10 years is that more and more of our agencies are selling more and more luxury-type travel. More than 10 years ago, I would say, the bulk fo our members' sales and their business was all-inclusive resorts and Mexico and the Caribbean. Of course, they did Hawaii and Florida, Disney, Alaska cruises. Europe was starting to become a big deal for them.
Then it really started exploding after that. Now, their business to other parts of the world has really taken off, like to Africa. Asia was really starting to become big before the pandemic. We're trying to pick up where we left off with sales to Asia. Just a lot more exotic travel and expedition-style travel. People are spending a lot of money for experiences and bigger hotel rooms, or not even traditional hotel rooms but a different style of accommodation. Their mix of business that would fall into luxury is a much bigger mix of business today.
Q: Ever since travel came back from Covid, a lot of agencies' luxury sales have been increasing. Have you noticed a particular uptick in that time period, too?
A: Most definitely. It's a trend that started within the past 10 years. Obviously, the pandemic put a hold on that, but then post-pandemic, the trend started back up again.
Q: What do you envision the new division doing for members?
A: We want to do more for them to foster luxury business and be able to provide more benefits to them. Our intention is to create a luxury division within our membership categories, almost to the extent that it might even be a separate membership category. We've had members say that they would be willing to pay higher membership fees just to receive more benefits in that way or be able to have access to more perks and amenities for their customers.
And we want our suppliers to step up, too. We already have a lot of suppliers in our preferred supplier portfolio that could call themselves luxury. We are doing a lot of business with them, but we really want them to step up. That's what some of our members have asked. They want better service, better support, access to better training. This program is not just a membership thing, it's also to enhance what our suppliers are offering us.
Q: Outside of better benefits for members and more suppliers buy-in, what do you envision for the division?
A: We definitely want to grow that business so that it's obviously more profitable for our members. We want them to be more profitable and earn higher margins on what they're selling. We want to attract more suppliers that fall into the luxury category; it's just a huge category. Because of this, there could be other suppliers that will be attracted to working with MAST over and above the luxury suppliers we have already.
Q: What's the time frame for launching?
A: We intend to work on it fast, and we are definitely going to launch this fall. I imagine it's going to be the type of thing where, even if all of the elements are not in place for the year because we just didn't get to some things, we're still going to be in a position to launch it. We can enhance it and add elements to it after we're up and running.