SALEM, Ohio — The mission of The Group Travel Family of Brands is to connect group travel planners with the travel industry members interested in serving their group needs. The organization accomplishes this through a series of annual conferences, three-day events featuring education, networking, sightseeing and destination discovery.
Those five travel conferences include Select Traveler Conference, Going On Faith Conference, Small Market Meetings Conference, African American Travel Conference and GroupTravelCon.
These events have become the industry’s leading source of group travel influencers in large part because of their insight and effort in identifying new and upcoming people who organize travel and meetings. Those travel groups may include social clubs, associations, faith-based groups, diversity groups and even friends-and-family travel events.
As groups of like-minded people grow the desire to travel together, the spectrum of travel planners expands, and the need for networking opportunities expands with it.
“We grow as new people discover the fun and satisfaction of helping others enrich their lives with group travel,” said Jennifer Ferguson of The Group Travel Family of Brands. “The ranks of incoming leisure group travel planners are expanding to include meeting planners, as well as travel agents who are finding our travel conferences valuable.”
An example of a new group travel organizer is Stacey Cabell, who recently attended her first Select Traveler Conference. Stacy and her husband, Mike, founded Starstuff Travel, which has grown to include over 30 planners, in 2023.
“I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for all your hard work to make the conference a success,” she wrote following the Select Traveler Conference. “With it being our first time attending this specific conference, we were unsure what to expect, but we really enjoyed it and made tons of connections! We are already working with some of the suppliers there as of today!”
“Mike and Stacey wanted to experience firsthand what one of our conferences could provide in growing their group travel business and now plan on registering their travel planners to our conferences,” said Ferguson. “It’s another success story in helping grow group travel, one contact at a time.”
Contact Cassandra Blankenship at 800-628-0993 or cblankenship@grouptravelfamily.com.
