Velia Kennedy is a travel agency owner with 28 agents, an ASTA Travel Advisor of the Year award on her shelf, two Wanderlust Campus certifications behind her, and a destination wedding brand launching under her agency, Modern Family Travel.
A few years ago, she was selling engineering software for the Department of Transportation, sneaking Disney vacations into the family budget, and hoping her husband would eventually stop noticing. What happened between then and now is a story about deliberately building something, making hard decisions at the right times, and surrounding yourself with the right systems and support before you need them.
Where It All Started
Velia spent 10 years as an account manager in corporate sales, working her way up the ladder in an industry unrelated to travel. What she did have was a genuine obsession with Disney, the kind that leads to frequent vacations and a spouse who starts keeping track of the budget a little too closely.
She found a small agency that allowed her to come on as an independent contractor. It was a way to channel the passion into something productive, earn some money doing something she loved, and justify the Disney spending in a new way. She was doing well, but left due to a values disconnect. Not every agency is the right fit for every advisor, and she was honest enough with herself to recognize when something was not working, even when the numbers were.
After she stepped away, her clients followed. They kept asking the same question: “Why don’t you just start your own agency?” She resisted for a while, then found Wanderlust Campus, enrolled in Careers on Vacation®, and launched Modern Family Travel, starting the certification program before she even officially launched the business to the world
The Decision to Leave Corporate Behind
Velia entered Careers on Vacation® with a clear, longer-term goal: she wanted to travel to eventually make it her full-time career and for her agency to grow into something with a real team behind it. She was the primary breadwinner for her household while working in the corporate world. The insurance, the stability, the paycheck, all of it was on her shoulders. Walking away from that was not a small decision.
But she reached that point that many advisors reach: the point where you cannot give 100% to two things at once, and you know that staying split means neither one gets what it deserves. She put in her two weeks and sent a message: “I quit.”
She did not quit before she was ready, or out of emotion or impatience. She quit when the math made sense, when the pipeline was real, when she knew the foundation was solid enough to carry her through the transition. That timing, building first, leaping second, is one of the most important pieces of advice for anyone who wants to become a travel agency owner without unnecessary financial risk.
ASTA Travel Advisor of the Year
The recognition that followed Velia’s growth came to her because of the way she showed up for a client during one of the hardest moments that client would ever face.
She had been planning a trip to Paris for a family of four. The husband fell gravely ill during the planning process and passed away before the trip could happen. Velia did not ask the family to figure out cancellations. She did not send a checklist of things to deal with. She told them not to worry, that she would handle everything, and that when they were ready to talk about rebooking, she would be there. When the time came, there were refund issues with vendors, extra fees that should not have been applied, and complicated logistics to untangle. She handled all of it, and, in some cases, absorbed the costs herself, because it was the right thing to do.
That client nominated her for ASTA Travel Advisor of the Year. She was one of three finalists, and she won. The Wanderlust Campus team was in the audience, loud enough that she could hear them from across the room before she even knew where they were sitting.
That story is not just a beautiful moment. It is a demonstration of what crisis management looks like when done well — not just logistically, but humanly. And it is the kind of client relationship that exists only when an advisor has been trained to think about service as extending far beyond the booking itself.
The Real Challenges of the First Years
Velia is transparent about what was actually hard, and her perspective is especially valuable because she can speak to it from two angles: as a solo travel advisor and as someone who eventually became a travel agency owner and built a team.
As an advisor, the biggest challenge early on was the isolation. Working from home, managing clients alone, and trying to build processes without a clear framework is genuinely disorienting, especially if you are coming from a structured corporate environment where someone else sets the agenda. What Careers on Vacation® gave her was not just information. It was a community of trained, invested peers who understood the industry and could offer real support rather than guesswork.
She had experienced the alternative before, working with an agency where you are essentially thrown in without a strong process infrastructure, figuring it out as you go, and never quite sure whether the pieces you find are the right ones or just the available ones. The difference between that experience and having a complete, structured system in place from the beginning was not subtle.
On the agency owner side, the biggest challenge was hiring. Velia is self-described as morally driven and emotionally generous. Qualities that are wonderful in a leader and genuinely dangerous in an unguided hiring process. Hiring emotionally, without the right framework, leads to mistakes that compound quickly. The CEO program at Wanderlust Campus gave her the tools to hire with intention, evaluate candidates against real criteria, understand the contractor-versus-employee distinction and the legal implications of getting it wrong, and build a culture rather than just a headcount.
As she puts it, some mistakes as an advisor are recoverable. Some mistakes as an agency owner are not. The legal and structural decisions you make in the early years create the architecture that everything else runs on. Getting those right from the beginning is not optional; it is foundational.
Sales Skills Do Not Transfer Automatically
Velia came into travel with a decade of corporate sales experience. She knew:
- funnels
- terminology
- was comfortable closing
And she still found that none of it translated directly to what a travel advisor actually does.
The difference is the relationship and timeline involved. In corporate sales, you are often moving a deal through a defined process toward a defined close. In travel, you are building something longer. A potential client might see your content multiple times before they reach out. They need to know who you are before they trust you with thousands of dollars and a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. And the relationship does not end when they book; it continues through pre-travel communication, the trip itself, post-travel follow-up, and, ideally, into the next booking.
Before the certification, Velia relied heavily on sending forms and throwing quotes at leads. It felt efficient, but it wasn’t building the kind of loyalty that generates repeat clients and referrals. The program helped her see the full arc of a client relationship, from first capture through every touchpoint along the way, and understand what needed to happen at each stage for the sale not just to close, but to stick.
That shift, she credits as one of the key reasons she reached the million-dollar and multi-million-dollar sales clubs as quickly as she did.
What Careers on Vacation® Offers That Nothing Else Does
Velia has been in the industry long enough and taken enough additional training through vendors and other sources to speak credibly about what makes Careers on Vacation® different. Her assessment is straightforward: nothing else comes full circle.
Most training in this industry is fragmented — a vendor teaches their platform, a host agency teaches their way of doing things, and a random course covers one piece of the puzzle without connecting it to the others. What Careers on Vacation® provides is a complete system, built specifically for travel advisors, that covers marketing, sales, service, crisis management, operations, legal, and the mindset work that runs beneath it all.
And it is not a one-size-fits-all path. The program supports advisors who want to remain independent contractors with a host agency, those who want to own a small boutique agency, and those who want to build a larger team and eventually step out of selling entirely. Velia has watched graduates pursue all three paths and succeed in each, each building a different kind of business, all supported by the same foundational training.
She describes it as lifelong. Not in a marketing sense, but in a real one. The alumni community, continued access to the updated curriculum, and the relationships formed with other certified advisors, these do not disappear when the active program ends. They become the professional network that travel agency owners draw on for years.
Where Modern Family Travel Is Headed Next
Velia’s next chapter is already in motion. As group travel, particularly destination weddings, has grown as a significant part of Modern Family Travel’s business, she is launching a dedicated branch: MFT Destination Weddings. It is a focused extension that allows her team to market and serve that specific client need with the depth it deserves, while the broader agency continues to serve individual and family travel.
With 28 agents currently on her team and a goal of keeping the agency tight-knit and capped at around 35, she is not chasing growth for its own sake. She is building something intentional, an agency where she can stay connected to every advisor, maintain the culture she has worked to create, and continue pushing her team toward the same recognitions and milestones she has reached herself.
That is what a travel agency owner who built on the right foundation looks like a few years in: not scattered or overwhelmed, but deliberate and expanding with purpose.
Ready to Start Building Your Own Story?
Whether you are still in corporate, already booking travel on the side, or somewhere in between, if you are serious about becoming a travel agency owner or simply building a travel business that is fully yours, the next step is a real conversation about your goals.
You can schedule a Goal Mapping Call, get a free Wanderlust Campus account, or join the monthly open house to learn more before you commit. The path looks different for everyone. What matters is that you start with the right foundation.
