Karen Yeates, Signature Travel Network’s executive vice president of information technologies, first joined the company in 1991 at age 22.
“It just feels like home for me,” Yeates said. “We were in Glendale, California back then, and I think we had 20 agencies. I left for four years, and I missed it the whole time I was gone … It's just one of those places that's magical. It's family.”
Signature celebrated its 70th anniversary in February, and the member-owned travel cooperative is now home for more than 15,000 travel advisors, who generate more than $11 billion in annual travel sales, according to the company.
Gina Weyer, Signature’s vice president of training, has been at the company for 31 years, and she said there were 35 member agencies when she came onboard in 1995. All of them were based in Southern California — with just one exception.
“We had one in Northern California, in San Francisco, which was our big outlier,” Weyer recalled with a chuckle. “So obviously that's changed over the years as we’ve expanded.”
Now headquartered in El Segundo, California — with a regional office in New York — Signature is home today to 225 travel agencies with more than 500 retail locations across the U.S., Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.
“When I first joined the company, obviously it was very small, but this concept of serving the members has been our daily approach ever since,” Weyer said. “And that has not changed.”
Then and Now
Founded in 1956 as Leisure Tours, the company was launched by a group of small, Southern California-based agencies, who thought they could increase profitability by teaming up, according to Signature’s president, Karryn Christopher.
“It was primarily a small group of agencies selling Hawaii,” said Christopher, who’s now been with Signature for 25 years. “And so, they looked at, ‘How can we use our collective buying power based on our volume to negotiate better commissions and better deals?’ And then it just grew from there."
Christopher noted that Signature remains the only member-owned cooperative in the travel industry today.
“Each of our members in the U.S. are equal shareholders,” she said. “And so, based on their equal share of the organization, they get a share of all of the profits, based on their preferred partner support.”
Yeates added that the company has applied that philosophy since she joined in the early 1990s.
“It's always been a focus on being a mutually beneficial relationship for both partners and members,” Yeates said.
It's always been a focus on being a mutually beneficial relationship for both partners and members.
Christopher said as the company’s membership grew, so did its list of preferred partners, which today includes a host of heavy hitters, including Pleasant Holidays, Norwegian Cruise Line and Avis Budget Group.
According to Yeates, it was former CEO Michelle Morgan — who passed away in 2013 after a long battle with breast cancer — who really spurred substantial growth at Signature.
“She came over and changed the whole culture,” Yeates said about Morgan, who also joined the company in the early 1990s. “They didn't do any marketing services for the members at the time. … It was really just commission negotiations — that was it. And so, it completely transformed the organization to come in with a marketing mindset, focusing on member growth and then expansion."
Shifting Focus
When Yeates first joined the business, she said many travel advisors were just “order takers,” but over the years, she’s witnessed a transformational, industry-wide shift.
“Advisors are creating a niche and a focus that they best serve,” Yeates explained. “And they’re not trying to sell everything and not trying to sell to every client, either. I really believe that’s been a welcome, positive change.”
Advisors are creating a niche and a focus that they best serve. And they’re not trying to sell everything and not trying to sell to every client, either. I really believe that’s been a welcome, positive change.
Christopher said Signature has also fine-tuned its strategy, working hard to provide impactful support advisors really need — whether that’s technology assistance, professional training, marketing or even just old-fashioned in-destination relationship building and networking opportunities.
“It's not about Signature,” she said. “It's really about our members and their brands within their local marketplace, and giving them the tools to make sure they can go to market according to their very unique business needs and models.”
Signature’s approach has become increasingly appealing. According to Christopher, the company and its membership have grown significantly since the pandemic.
“Half of our co-workers are new to Signature within the last five years,” she said. “And approximately half of our members are new to Signature within the last five years.”
A sizeable chunk of that membership increase consists of people who are new to the industry, according to Weyer.
“At our annual conference last year, which is our biggest in-person event, we had about 1,700 travel advisors,” she said. “And I believe almost 400 were new to industry. So, it's significant."
This year’s Signature Conference will be held Nov. 15-18, outside of Las Vegas for the first time in more than two decades at the Orlando World Center Marriott, where the company will also hold fundraising events for its nonprofit charitable arm, Travel Elevates.
“It's our opportunity to use our collective resources and the influence we have in communities around the world … to make a positive impact within the industry and within those communities,” Christopher said of Travel Elevates.
Along with funding support for community-based economic and educational programs, Travel Elevates also aims to help travelers identify “local projects they may wish to support during their trips,” according to its website.
“Because we have the relationships with the people on the ground in the communities, we have that inside track to make sure we're focused on the right areas and directing both the advisor and the traveler to the best opportunities,” Christopher said.
