WorldVia Travel Network is constructing on a powerful yr: Travel Weekly

Jamie Biesiada

It has been a powerful yr for WorldVia Travel Network, with total progress up 30-plus p.c, in accordance with CEO Jason Block.

There are “pockets of slower growth,” he mentioned, however the community is performing strongly, as are many particular person advisors.

“I think the challenge that many advisors face, and not just within WorldVia but across the industry, is what segments do I focus on?” he mentioned. “Am I attached to a space in the market that is growing strongly and that I have competitive advantage, that I have something unique to offer, that I can predictably grow year over year over year?”

This yr, a kind of areas has confirmed to be group cruising. Block pointed to that as an space of explicit progress for the community, which is recent off its World25 convention, held final month in Richardson, Texas.

WorldVia Travel Network is WorldVia Travel Group’s host company. Block began WorldVia Travel Group in 2014 and purchased a Travel Leaders retail department with seven places in 2015. That yr, the corporate additionally purchased two company TMCs. In 2018, it bought Travel Quest, the host company that will grow to be WorldVia Travel Network. That is certainly one of its main enterprise strains right this moment; its company enterprise is Safe Harbors Business Travel.

In addition to sturdy segments like group cruising, WorldVia Travel Network can also be experiencing numerous exercise this fall.

Fall reserving tendencies

The first week of October, Block mentioned, “was one of our highest invoicing weeks of the year, and that’s kind of rare. You wouldn’t really expect to see that in October.”

Quite a little bit of these bookings are for 2025 departures, additionally a shock, he mentioned. Last-minute vacationers are largely headed to Europe.

Next yr is wanting stable. Block mentioned the community has an identical progress price going into 2026 because it did going into 2025, with explicit energy in Europe and Asia.

“I’m always cautiously optimistic, but there does not yet seem to be any signs of real headwinds from the face of things like tariffs or any of that,” he mentioned.

Introducing WorldVia Academy

WorldVia Travel Network made a number of bulletins on the World25 convention, together with the introduction of the WorldVia Academy.

The academy collects the hundreds of items of training and coaching that WorldVia has for its advisors, Block mentioned. They are actually extremely searchable, and the Academy introduces issues like studying tracks and playlists.

It additionally launched a sequence of occasions referred to as boards that zero in on classes like FIT, cruise and teams.

AI adoption and growth

WorldVia, Block mentioned, was an early adopter of generative AI. It got here out with its first AI product, a content material generator, round two months after the late-2023 launch of ChatGPT.

That product advanced into the AI-powered AIVIA.

“It does everything that our content creator product did, but a whole lot more,” Block mentioned. “The whole idea was, we want to create a workspace where advisors can use AI as a business partner.”

About 20% of AIVIA makes use of are nonetheless centered round content material creation, he mentioned, however advisors may use it for issues like enterprise planning, itinerary creation and advertising and marketing planning. It incorporates inside data and third-party provider data.

The first era of AIVIA was launched a couple of months in the past. Now, WorldVia is in growth for its subsequent phases, popping out later this yr.

Block promised “a whole other level of integration into other workflows” in addition to agentic capabilities, that means it may possibly do duties proactively on behalf of advisors.

While it’s creating additional iterations of AI tech, Block mentioned that is being accomplished cautiously with guardrails in place.

“Every advisor knows they work across 87 different tabs at all times,” Block mentioned. “Our vision for that product is to consolidate those tabs.”