In this special episode we present a live session from ATIA's 'Beyond Borders' summit held at the ICC in Sydney.

In the first release from Beyond Borders (BB), this session covers the first hour of and specifically the key areas of focus that will lead the industry towards 2030.

The project is called A30, and you'll hear from ATIA CEO Dean Long, Chair Christian Hunter, Vice Chairs Skroo Turner and Danielle Russom, and Director Brett Mitchell.

The group outlined future-focused announcements around industry protection, business compliance with 'modern slavery' regulations, attracting young people into our industry, and why the ATAS brand has been renamed to become 'ATIA Accredited' for the benefit of both the industry and consumers.

Following the annoucements, they sat down for a discussion on these subjects and took questions from the audience.

This is the first of several sessions you'll hear on Offloaded.

But while it's a different kind of episode, our regular features remain. Towards the end of the episode, Richard puts webinar queen Charlie Trevena 'On Notice', and AC offloads about overtourism.

We hope you enjoy, and if you'd like to support us you can sign up for our newsletter at www.offloaded.com.au where you'll receive first notification on new episodes and more.

Oh, and subscribe to the podcast on any podcast platform!

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Offloaded Season 3 is supported by Interline Travel. For more information, visit www.interlinetravel.com.au

Offloaded is back for Season Three!

To kick things off, Richard and AC are joined by possibly the most senior industry leader to appear on Offloaded thus far in the shape of James Kavanagh, Flight Centre Travel Group’s Global CEO of Leisure.

We begin by covering leadership, change and the importance of having mentors and good people around you, before moving onto two of FCTG’s longer-term strategies of growth into luxury travel and forming new partnership options for independent agents to ensure a healthy travel sector.

“We work in a wonderful industry and I think there's so much potential for what's to come,” he says.

Hot on JK’s heels comes a chat with NCL’s Damien Borg and Angela Middleton, who speak of empowering agents via co-branding, a rapid growth in NCL’s group programme and increased options for travellers in Europe who are increasingly cruising as part of a wider holiday.

JK also has some book club recommendations, which we are linking here. They are: Legacy, by James Kerr and The Leadership Pipeline, by Ram Charan. We expect all listeners to have read these in time for the next episode of Offloaded.

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Offloaded Season 3 is supported by Interline Travel. For more information, visit www.interlinetravel.com.au

The final episode of Series 2 broke the mould before we change things up again for Series 3 that's coming in September.

Erina Pindar, COO and Managing Partner of SmartFlyer, became our first international guest, our first live in-person podcast held at a luxury hotel, and the first guest who hijacked our Offloaded section with an Offload of her very own.

Erina joined SmartFlyer when there were just 6 travel advisors connected to the brand. Celebrating it's 10th anniversay in 2025, the numbers are currently at 250 across the US and Europe with another 35 here in Australia.

We asked how Erina glues an international network together and what Australian advisors can learn from their international counterparts. She also spoke about 'recommendation culture' and the tightrope a modern advisor has to dance between recommending everything on social media versus holding some of that back to avoid contributing to overtourism and the possible saturation of those cute, secret little finds that give advisors their value in the first place.

If that topic isn't fascincating enough Erina also talked about the increasing trend of putting clients on a retainer, an entirely new concept to at least one of our hosts.
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The winner of the Numinous Moments competition that includes 3 Nights in the Maldives at JOALI BEING for two people with half-board and return seaplane transfers was announced during this episode as Sarah Webster of Wayfinder Travel, with this entry!

Our enormous congrats to Sarah as we put claims in to be her plus-one. Pick me! Pick me!

We must also make honourable mentions of three terrific runner-up entries from Deanne Scanlan with this one, Peta Godfrey with this one and another from Emily Sonley who entered with an email that we read out during the episode.

Charlie Trevena's new and exciting Travel Agent Takeaways podcast was mentioned, and is an instant contender for the second-best podcast in our industry. You can find that here, and there's links to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform on that page.
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A heartfelt thanks to our series sponsor Numinous Luxury Travel Representation for their support and encouragement, without which this series would never have happened. More info on Numinous is available at https://www.numinousltr.com/

And we've been exceptionally proud to partner with the iconic Hong Kong Tourism Board to raise awareness of the magic of Hong Kong during the series that has included hidden treasures that you'll never have heard about. Their website is here: https://www.discoverhongkong.com/anz/index.html

Finally our sincere thanks to all the guests who've appeared in Series 2, the organisations who've appeared as Sales Calls, our stand-in hosts Nicola Strudwick and Sonia Jones, our marketing team of Lisa Maroun and Anya Vokhmyakova, our editor Chris Finesa......and most of all to you, our listeners xx

You're all on a retainer for Series 3.
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Social Details

Follow Erina Pindar, Managing Partner and COO at SmartFlyer, here on LinkedIn and here on Instagram. The Insta is pretty cool - just saying.