Gene Lashley and Peter Lloyd

Gene Lashley and Peter Lloyd

Century Travel in Atlanta has always been about its advisors, about finding out what’s important to them, whether it's the chance to travel or earn higher commissions, and then making it work for them. That people focus has clearly created a good karma for the agency, which is run by CEO Gene Lashley and president, Peter Lloyd, as business has grown steadily since we spoke with them for their August 2012 cover profile. Back then, annual revenue for Century Travel was $45 million a year; that figure has grown by about 8 percent annually, Lashley tells us.

“We have been very fortunate as we have added a number of new, younger and very bright agents,” he tells Luxury Travel Advisor. “The type of travel we focus on has not changed — but the demographic of our agents has, and therefore their clients have become overall younger.”

August 2012
 
August 2012

Aside from the focus on its core clientele and bringing in younger customers, Lashley and Lloyd have been focusing on the very high-net-worth consumers, securing its new clients via referrals.

“That’s why you work extra hard to make sure you do the best job for everybody; you get some wonderful referrals that way,” Lloyd told us in 2012. “You get their friends and then their friends of friends; that’s the name of the game for us.”

The agency, “still happily with Virtuoso,” just chartered the Silver Galapagos for a client taking his friends, business associates and family onboard for a week. “It was an amazing trip on all levels,” Lashley and Lloyd report.

The two have just returned from Myanmar, where they went with a small group of friends. “Myanmar is beautiful and changing so incredibly fast. We never tire of Italy — and finding new corners of the earth to explore as well as new experiences for clients,” they tell Luxury Travel Advisor.

The last hotel they visited was The Siam in Bangkok. “It’s exquisite in every detail, and we love its private cooking school and the guided tour of the night markets,” they tell us.

In 2012, this dynamic duo was very confident about the future of luxury travel. “Expert guidance in the form of experienced and knowledgeable agents will always be in demand in the future as the trend of information overload continues,” Lloyd said then.

Little has changed in that regard. All in all, Lashley and Lloyd remain super enthusiastic about the business: “The luxury travel market is booming across all sectors!” they say, but it’s perhaps their private lives are providing the most joy these days. After 30 years together, they got married at Montage Laguna on February 14, 2014.