When traveling internationally, cellular data is important for many of us, whether we’re using our smart phones keeping in touch with friends and family back home or taking care of others matters such as banking or travel reservations. For example, when I land in Amsterdam tomorrow morning, I’ll want to book a train ticket to the city center, which I can do using the NS app. Why pay 40 euros or more to for a taxi to take me from Schiphol to Amsterdam Centraal when I can do it for less than 6 euros, particularly when my hotel, Doubletree Centraal, is next door to the train station?

Of course, I could book my ticket in advance and not rely on international data, or I could…

Talk about a distribution channel. Thanks to 300,000 leads that came into the Travel Leaders Network website, the consortium’s Agent Profiler system delivered three-quarters of a billion dollars’ worth of new revenue—68,750 bookings at an average of about $10,000, for a total of $733 million—to its 6,000 travel agency members in 2024, at a close rate of almost 1:4.

That was the best of several great numbers Travel Leaders president John Lovell shared at the group’s annual press conference at the Ritz Carlton Nomad in New York last week. A few more: 2024 was its best year ever, with revenue up 17% over 2023 and overall sales up more than $1 billion. Land sales grew 9.7% from 2023 to 2024 and cruise sales by a whopping…