Building a travel business is often the second chance young professionals seek when their original careers didn’t quite pan out. It’s a do-over, a redemption opportunity to make a name for themselves. This inspiring narrative is one of many reasons why travel advising is a rapidly growing profession: the whimsical nature of the industry speaks to a dreamer’s heart, while the logistical organization of trip details calls to the Type A personality.
But career revivals aren’t the only path into travel. Some advisors come to the industry from a place of intrigue rather than reinvention — and they’re people like Bruce Young, who spent over 30 years as a corporate executive before beginning the next chapter. Each day, his story proves it’s never too late for a new adventure, no matter where you are in life.
Finding Purpose in Travel
Whether retirement is off in the distance or right around the corner, we all inevitably make some major life decisions to transition out of our professional roles. When that moment came for Young, taking the chance to decompress from an active career and enjoying some leisurely days were a top priority. That was, of course, until he got the itch to pursue a part-time opportunity.
“I was looking for something interesting,” Young said. “My wife and I have four grown children, and a couple of them mentioned becoming a travel agent after having planned our family vacations all those years when they were younger.”
It was a job that checked all the boxes, and Young got to work researching his options. For someone intimately familiar with the grind of fostering work relationships and climbing the professional ladder, Young wasn’t interested in that kind of commitment again. However, Avoya Travel, with its Live Leads program, did catch his eye.
As part of the agency’s network, Young would have direct access to qualified, ready-to-book clients. It was a business model that made sense for him, and 4Ever Young Travel officially opened its doors in 2022.
“I didn’t have the know-how, or frankly the desire, to start from ground zero and try to build a customer base from scratch,” Young explained. “By utilizing Avoya’s Leads system, I was able to build a customer base very quickly. Those customers would then lead to new customer referrals, and my business started to grow exponentially.”
What started out as a simple side quest for Young developed into something much more explosive. In fact, the numbers stacked together so impressively, Young earned Avoya’s ELITE Agency Member status in 2024, a recognition for achieving $3.5 million in annual sales only two years after kickstarting his business.
“While I wanted to do this as a part-time venture, it became contagious as I found great joy in setting up cruises and all-inclusive vacations for customers,” he said. “From what started out as learning the business and getting to know the world, it ramped up very quickly, and the sales started adding up.”
The Strategy Behind the Sales
Having survived the growing pains of being a new advisor, Young is passing along a few words of wisdom he learned early on: avoid selling vacations and trips with your personal budget in mind.
“There are customers who have the means to do larger, luxurious types of vacations and are just looking for someone to help them plan it and take care of them,” Young said. “In the end, from a fiscal and agency standpoint, your numbers start to grow much quicker with the higher end luxury clients.”
Big-ticket items might not be every travel professional’s cup of tea, but as new advisors narrow in on their specialties, Young encourages them to consider more complex itineraries. He points to polar expeditions as a prime example, with the pre-hotel stay, charter flight and cruise naturally lending themselves to a premium price tag.
Looking ahead to 2026, Young plans to apply these same principles to dry land, tapping into other emerging niches.
“There are large groups of folks that want to do specialty types of vacations,” he said. “Pickleball group trips are starting to take off and don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon!”
Originally appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of The Compass magazine
About the Author
comments