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ABOARD THE HARMONY OF THE SEAS — Host agency Nexion has rebranded to Nexion Travel Group and unveiled a new logo, while announcing the network’s expansion into Mexico.
President Jackie Friedman unveiled the changes on stage during CoNexion 2018 here on Sunday, alongside Mike Foster, president of Nexion Canada, and Victor Cervantes, director of operations at Corporate Travel Services in Mexico City.
“You guys all know and love Nexion, I hope, because you’re all here, but it didn’t always start that way,” Friedman told agents. “We were challenged. We were challenged with finding new agents, attracting them to Nexion, knowing what we were.”
So, Nexion representatives met with Stephen McGillivray, chief marketing officer of Travel Leaders Group (Nexion’s parent company), to design a new logo.
The design was dictated by a desire to keep some facets of Nexion’s previous logo.
“We don’t want to lose what’s us,” Friedman said, particularly the white circle with an “x” dividing the colors purple, green, yellow and red, helping form the word Nexion. “But we want to find something that takes the brand that we all know and love and evolve it into something that’s a little bit more hip, a little bit more modern.”
A new logo was also unveiled for Nexion Canada. It has a maple leaf dotting the “i” in Nexion.
Both logos still contain the tagline “The Travel Professional’s Host Agency.”
At a press briefing, Friedman said “Travel Group” was added to Nexion to help those outside of the industry immediately distinguish the host agency as a travel company.
Corporate Travel Services, acquired by Travel Leaders Group in 2017, will officially join Nexion in the coming months to launch Nexion Mexico for independent contractors.
Friedman said Corporate Travel Services’ independent contractors’ division will be part of Nexion. It is Nexion’s second international expansion after launching Canada operations in 2013. That business has grown from 20 to 340 independent contractors in five years, Foster said.
Corporate Travel Services currently has around 85 contractors focusing primarily on corporate and high-end luxury travel, most of whom work in its offices in Mexico City. Friedman said Nexion Mexico hopes to increase the number of home-based contractors.
Around 670 attendees are present at CoNexion 2018, including more than 400 member agents. The conference features 44 workshops, supplier roundtables, networking opportunities and NEXTalks — Nexion’s play on TED Talks, where agents talk about best practices and other topics.
Source: travelweekly.com
