They learned, they laughed, they cried (tears of joy, of course!) and most of all, they connected… MTA – Mobile Travel Agents has wrapped up a historic national conference in Fiji, where Karryon’s MARK HARADA witnessed firsthand the respect, admiration and love ‘MTA-ers’, along with 150 or so suppliers and guests, have for one another and the travel industry as a whole.
Not your average Mobile Travel Agents conference, the 2024 event was MTA’s first in four years and its inaugural national summit abroad – so there was much to celebrate.
And celebrate guests did, as more than 330 attendees worked, played and bonded over MTA’s and the travel industry’s recent successes, with help from conference platinum sponsors Viking and TTC Tour Brands, gold sponsors including Silversea and Air Canada, and silver sponsors like Hurtigruten, G Adventures and Fiji Airways.
Here’s a snapshot of what we learned at the conference…
MTA is growing (and growing)
Membership has increased. Sales have increased.
CEO Don Beattie, who’s clearly passionate about MTA and the travel sector, tells me at the event that Mobile Travel Agents’ membership currently totals 432 across Australia. Nearly 200 members made it to Fiji for this conference.
Its head office staff now numbers a robust 56. At a ratio of around one HQ staffer to eight agents, Don says that’s “pretty high support” for members.
But revenue has also risen, with the group experiencing a record 2023 financial year and already surpassing that by the end of Q3 for FY24.
Quality over quantity
Despite booming membership, Beattie says MTA – Mobile Travel Agents isn’t aiming to be the biggest in the business. But it wants to be the best. It’s obviously open to growth and open-minded about how it accepts members, so long as they have a minimum of five years of face-to-face consulting experience along with some other criteria.
It’s even open to how members operate – without KPIs for instance – and encourages a healthy work-life balance.
However, it will still turn away potential members if they’re deemed unsuitable for the group. This separates the pretenders from the contenders for success.
Strong support
MTA members flagged support as one of, if not the top reasons they love being an MTA agent.
Speaking on a panel at the conference, Queensland-based luxury travel advisor Wendy Gunther said Mobile Travel Agents was “amazing with support”, recalling a recent interaction with the head office that involved help with a rushed, complex business class booking the following week – five minutes before close-of business. Jason, at MTA HQ, took the time to provide Wendy with the support she needed and even offered to help anytime after hours.
On a macro-level, Beattie says MTA aims to “support our advisors to grow their business at the speed and to the level they want”.
“We see that our role is very much one of leadership and to provide support ongoing to our members,” he tells me.
“For example, MTA was not closed during COVID for a single day… we provided full support all the way through that period.”
A family affair
MTA – Mobile Travel Agents may have started as a family business – Founders and Managing Directors Karen and Roy Merricks’ children have been involved with the company since its creation in 2000 (even though both were still students) – but it’s now a business family. By that I mean MTA advisors are close. Like siblings who really like each other and don’t argue over who gets a bigger slice of the pie (a constant in my household growing up, literally, so maybe even closer than some families?).
MTA feels like an extended family – and that’s flagged through chats I have with multiple advisors here.
But even more importantly, MTA supports its members’ families by fostering a home-work balance.
“If you’ve got a family to work around, you just need flexible work hours,” Karen tells me.
“These guys are happy, because they’ve got freedom. They have flexibility. They work around their families.”
But the Merricks note that their agents are still operating major businesses.
“Some of these people are earning big money,” Karen says. “The sky’s the limit.”
Learn & earn
“Education is everything,” Beattie tells me on the sidelines of the MTA event. And MTA’s conference reflects that.
Preceding the event are two days of training covering everything from cruise, luxury and product training to fares and ticketing to business development and MTA systems.
Day one sessions included the “resurgence of touring”, “getting back to basics” in a new airfare landscape and “charging for your time”.
Day two comprised workshops around growing and streamlining businesses, maximising Virtuoso membership and “Celebrating the Journey” – the theme of this year’s conference.
Leveraging luxury
Dispelling myths about luxury travel and outlining luxe travel truths, Virtuoso Travel Senior Vice President Michael Londregan told conference delegates that there’s “going to be an incredible opportunity” for luxury travel and those who sell it.
“The rich are getting richer, and they’re also getting richer here,” he said.
“So in Australia, we’re going to see ultra-high net worth individuals go up, globally by 28 per cent, and in Australia by 27 per cent.
“That means for us, there’s going to be extensive demand for the best products. And we’re going to see incredible products.
“If you’re thinking my customer base is going to get bigger, it will; if you’re thinking that we have a huge opportunity in front of us, we do.”
Londregan also touched on growing luxury travel trends including health and wellness travel, “celebration” and family reunion trips, and a big picture trend focusing on the “I’m going to spend less money on stuff and more money on experiences” mantra.
“What we see in our society is people are rocketing on travel,” he says. “They’re figuring out what’s really important to them… and we need to take advantage of that.”
Fun in Fiji
Aussie families may flock to Fiji for flop-n-drop breaks, but the Mobile Travel Agents conference showed that the island nation also makes for a great conference location, with delegates discovering why Tourism Fiji’s tagline is “Where Happiness Comes Naturally”.
Fiji also holds a special place in the hearts of Karen and Roy, who used to come over four times a year and even did a lot of their strategy planning for MTA here.
So Karen says it was a bit of a no brainer to hold the group’s first-ever overseas conference in the island nation.
“There was never going to be anywhere else,” she tells me. “We call Fiji our happy place.”
MTA 2025
Speaking at the conference gala dinner at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa on Saturday night, Roy revealed that next year’s MTA – Mobile Travel Agents National Conference would return to Aussie shores, this time in Adelaide.
So MTA-ers… get ready to swap those tropical cocktails for some Barossa reds as the big bash heads to the much cooler climes of South Australia’s charming capital.
For more information on MTA – Mobile Travel Agents, click here.
The writer was a guest of MTA. All images by Mark Harada.
