This August, my mom and I packed our bags for Las Vegas and the most intense, exciting, exhausting, and inspiring event on our calendar every single year: Virtuoso Travel Week! We prepare for months beforehand, researching companies, studying destinations and properties, reaching out to the people we know we’ll be meeting, and figuring out exactly what we want to ask them. By the time we land in Vegas, our schedules are packed from morning until night, and when I say packed, I mean packed. Most days we left our room around 7:15 in the morning and didn’t get back until 10:00 at night or later, with breakfast and coffee meetings, appointments, lunches, professional development, dinners, happy hours, supplier events, parties, and a million conversations squeezed into every spare minute. Our clients weren’t actually in Las Vegas with us, but we brought you with us everywhere we went!
8 minutes. Make them count!
One of the biggest parts of Travel Week is something called matched appointments, and the easiest way to describe them is professional speed dating! We sit down with a hotelier, cruise line, destination management company, tour operator, or another travel partner, and we have exactly 8 minutes together before it’s time to move on to the next one. Eight minutes! That’s why our work starts long before Las Vegas. Ahead of time, we reach out to the people we’re scheduled to meet (usually connecting on LinkedIn and letting them know we’re excited to talk), then research their companies so we’re not wasting those precious minutes on questions we could’ve answered ourselves. We want to ask the questions that matter. Who’s the right client for you? What do you do differently? What should we know that we won’t find on your website? Where can you make an itinerary better? And most importantly, which of our clients are we already picturing while we’re sitting across from you? Because that happens constantly.
Sometimes a conversation makes us think of you right away
This year, I sat down with a destination management company (DMC) that specializes in Ireland, Scotland, and London. First, we had to laugh about my name, because McKenzie McCarty is apparently a pretty strong way to walk into a meeting with someone selling Scotland! Then we got down to business. We’ve been working more and more with DMCs, because the right one can be an incredible connection between us, the hotels we book, and what our clients actually experience on the ground, from local guides and experiences to transportation and support. As I listened, my brain went straight to our clients. Ireland and Scotland are so popular with our travelers right now, and we’ve had so many conversations with people who want to go, so by the end of that meeting I was already thinking about real trips we could create and real people we could match with this partner. That’s what so much of Travel Week looks like for us! Every company we meet runs through the same filter: “Who would love this?”
Another meeting this year was with a group tour operator we’d heard wonderful things about but had never met or worked with before, and I walked away completely inspired by the possibilities for traveling together as a group. I’m looking at you, Swifties! My brain started going a million miles an hour. What could we create? Where could we go? Who could we bring together, and what would make it feel special? That’s one of my favorite things about this week. My mom and I each bring something different to Susan’s Travel Services, and I’m definitely the creative side of the brain (she’s the one who’s good at math!). Put me in a room with hundreds of people telling me what’s possible around the world, and I’m going to start dreaming things up!
And then there are the people who’ve become friends
Travel Week is also about seeing the people we’ve known for years, and some of our favorite moments happen there! One of those people is our friend David from The Europe Hotel & Resort in Killarney, Ireland, and our friendship with him started with a hangover. (His, not mine!) 3 years ago, we happened to be sitting near David at breakfast when he mentioned to a friend that he wasn’t feeling so great after the night before. I overheard him and did what any good future industry friend apparently does: I offered him Tylenol! Somehow, a friendship was born out of that totally random breakfast. Since then, my mom and my dad, Dan, have visited David at The Europe Hotel & Resort twice, and it’s become a property we absolutely love for our clients. Now when we see David at Travel Week, we skip the business cards and just catch up with a friend.
We also got to spend time with our friend Ray, who represents the Fairmont Kea Lani and Fairmont Orchid in Hawaii. We’ve known Ray for years and through different chapters of his career, and seeing him feels much more like catching up with an old friend than sitting in a business meeting. We talk about travel, what we’ve experienced lately, what’s inspiring us, what’s new at his properties, and of course, life! There are so many people like David and Ray at Travel Week that I couldn’t possibly tell all their stories in one blog post (we’d need a whole series!). Some of our most important relationships grew over breakfasts, dinners, site visits, and years of getting to know each other, and those relationships matter more than our clients may ever realize.
The things you can’t find in a Google search
There’s an unbelievable amount of travel information online. You can look up hotels, compare rooms, watch resort videos, read reviews, and scroll through gorgeous photos for hours! But knowing a company’s website and knowing which partner is right for you are two very different things, and one of the biggest things we brought home from Travel Week 2026 was a better understanding of who is right for whom. We met with DMCs and tour operators we already knew, companies we’d heard of but never worked with, and some that were completely new to us. Some are huge names most travelers would recognize right away, and others aren’t. The biggest name isn’t automatically the best choice, because one company might be phenomenal for one client and completely wrong for another. Two people can visit the exact same destination and need totally different partners behind their trips!
That’s where knowing our clients matters just as much as knowing our industry. Part of my job is listening closely enough to pick up on the things you tell me about yourself, including the details you might not realize will matter later. Then we combine that with decades of experience, first-hand knowledge, and our relationships across the Virtuoso network to anticipate needs that might not have even crossed your mind yet. You shouldn’t have to know every question to ask. That’s why you have us!
75,000 steps each (without really going outside)
All that relationship building takes a lot of walking! My mom and I each logged more than 75,000 steps during the week, running between ARIA, Vdara, Bellagio, and back again, which is more than 150,000 steps between the 2 of us, and we somehow barely left the buildings. Our days turned into a blur of coffee, conversations, notes, elevators, escalators, appointments, meals, introductions, hugs, and the occasional moment of trying to remember which ballroom we were supposed to be in. We also found time to film TikToks between meetings, because apparently I don’t believe my mom should be allowed to just stand around when we have 5 free minutes! Every day she’d ask me, “What TikTok are we making today?” and every day my answer was basically, “Let the creative process happen. When I know, I’ll know.” Eventually inspiration would strike, I’d start directing her, and we’d film whatever ridiculous idea popped into my head. It was one of the funniest parts of the week! By the time we got back to our one-bedroom suite at Vdara each night, we were completely done. We were sharing a king bed, so we’d crawl in, put on a true crime show on the laptop, and promptly fall asleep. Luxury travel, everyone!
Naturally, the travel advisors had travel problems
By the last day, we were so ready to get home. Las Vegas to Phoenix is about a 45-minute flight, so easy, right? Our flight was delayed, then delayed again, and then again, until the new departure time was so late that we realized we could rent a car, drive all the way to Phoenix, and be home before our plane even left Las Vegas. So that’s exactly what we did! After a whole week of talking about travel logistics, troubleshooting, and making sure trips run smoothly, 3 exhausted travel professionals piled into a rental car in business attire and started driving across the desert, and honestly, it was hilarious. We told stories, laughed about the week, listened to Taylor Swift, and talked about everyone we’d met and everything we’d learned. And yes, we made it home before our original flight ever took off! Our first stop was my house, where my Golden Retriever puppy, Piper, was waiting to greet me, which was the best possible ending to that week.
Then we came home and got to work
After we rested, my mom and I sat down for something we’re officially bringing back: our Monday Meeting! Travel Week gave us so much to talk about. Who stood out? Who do we want to follow up with? Which new relationships do we want to build? What worked this year, what didn’t, and what did we learn? What marketing ideas did we come home with, and what new trips could we create? Every page of our Travel Week notes is turning into emails we’ll send, relationships we’ll grow, companies we’ll look into further, ideas we’ll develop, and eventually, trips we’ll plan for you. That’s why we spend months preparing for this week and happily put up with the 75,000 steps, the 8-minute appointments, the long days, and the sore feet! We came home with people we can call, places we understand better, and new questions we now know to ask, and every one of them is there to make your next trip better.
If something in here got you thinking about your next trip (Ireland or Scotland, maybe?) and you’re not sure where to start, that’s where I come in! Book a complimentary consultation with me! We’ll get to know each other, I’ll walk you through how Susan’s Travel Services works (including what being a Virtuoso agency means for you), and we’ll talk about next steps.