As 2025 comes to an end, The Affluent Traveler Collection—the luxury marketing organization comprising top travel advisors from TravelSavers and NEST—is celebrating two decades of operation.

What started in 2005 as a marketing program, according to Nicole Mazza, chief marketing officer of TravelSavers, NEST and The Affluent Traveler Collection, “with the goal of driving quality luxury leads to our agencies through focused marketing of our powerful partnerships” through a consumer-facing lead-gen magazine (then called Great Hotels; now known as The Affluent Traveler) is now a fully fledged network of luxury travel specialists with more than 350 participating agencies. The Affluent Traveler Collection’s partner portfolio now stands at over 1,300 hotels, as well as luxury cruise lines, OnLocation destination management companies, tour operators and more.

Beyond that initial lead-gen initiative, The Affluent Traveler Collection (ATC) now offers a booking engine, air fulfillment services, a team of business analysts, in-destination trips, webinars and more. ATC also hosts a yearly Symposium. The event—which was held every five years to start—brings together about 250 agency owners, managers and advisors, alongside supplier partners for meetings, network events and a trade show.

From Marketing Program to Organization

With the brand entering its third decade of service, LATTE U.S. caught up with Mazza for a look back and a look forward.

The Affluent Traveler Collection, said Mazza, “really started as a marketing campaign to support our TravelSavers and our NEST luxury advisors … but we learned very quickly that not every advisor specializes in this space, that we were doing a disservice to the clients by sending them to an advisor who truly wasn’t an affluent advisor,” referring to the launch of the Great Hotels magazine. “So, it was important for us to create a whole new program and a collection of advisors—plus products—so we could match that consumer properly with the right advisor.”

At launch, ATC had 100 vetted travel agencies. That number is now up to 350.

Looking forward toward the next decade and beyond, Mazza said that while “we will never be the largest, as far as the number of agencies that belong to our organization, it is about being the best that is there [in order] to grow our agencies that belong to our network.”

She added, however, that ATC would love to see its membership grow. “We know that it is, from an agency’s perspective, a very profitable side of the business.” And while The Affluent Traveler Collection team will work with agencies looking to evolve their business so they can fit into the niche, it always comes back to matching “the right agency to the right client,” so ATC must be very strict in who it lets into the program.

Traveler Trends

On the client side, not surprisingly, the affluent traveler has changed drastically over the last 20 years. No longer is it simply about the five-star hotel, vacations are more “experiential,” according to Mazza. What has not changed, however, is the role of the luxury travel advisor.

To be a luxury travel advisor, she said, is “to be a unique expert in the market” and an expert in “understanding their customer’s needs, being able to deliver on those needs [and] being a true concierge to their clients.” Advisors have evolved simply in their product knowledge so they can best match what’s out there with the evolving wants and demands of their clients.

As for what clients are looking for, Mazza noted the rising interest in “coolcations,” as well as “strong growth in expedition in the market,” off-the-beaten-path experiences and secondary and tertiary markets “that are a little less known but equally, if not more, charming that have a lot to offer to a consumer.” Asia (Japan, in particular), Hawaii and Africa are also hot, said the ATC CMO.

Looking Forward

While Mazza isn’t very keen on making bold predictions for business (“we have said that in the past and we’ve turned the corner having a phenomenal year and then things that have happened that are out of our control that have affected our industry greatly”), she did say, “Every indicator for 2026 is we are certainly outpacing ‘25 and we continue to grow there. There is very strong demand for travel agency support and travel experts.”

Mazza added: “The only thing that would stand in our way of hitting our goals is, certainly, the unpredictability of today’s geopolitical landscape.”

That said, Mazza and The Affluent Traveler Collection are focusing on what they can control. “It has always been about innovation and technology, ensuring that we are building out the tools that our advisors need to stay ahead of their competition in their marketplace. We will continue to invest in that and invest in our advisors.”

She added, “We are not slowing down.”