In a time when travel is primarily transactional rather than personal, more agencies are realizing that the principles of family values and trust fuel long-term success. BWJ Travel is an example of this wave where authenticity and personal connection define how travel is experienced by the next generation.
The brothers Edwin and Jacob Sarkisyan are the founders of BWJ Travel, which began as a legacy established by their father, Vic Sarkisyan, with SVH Tours & Travel in the early 1990s. What started as a small storefront in California has now grown into a host travel agency across America, enabling independent consultants to build long-term fulfilling careers while reconnecting families through travel for experiences of quality.
The Sarkisyan family background reads like a playbook on resilience. Vic, a first-generation immigrant, worked multiple jobs for his family and showed them the groundwork of a strong company culture built on perseverance and gratitude. His sons would quickly become accustomed to watching him video tape vacation clips for clients and working on their bookings long before there was digital travel. Those formative moments in the boys’ lives are what will create the foundation for BWJ Travel today; empathy, honesty, and true appreciation for people’s stories.
“Trust, perseverance, and respect are at the heart of everything we do,” Edwin Sarkisyan explains. “They’re not just company values; they’re personal ones passed down from our father. That’s what has allowed us to build something sustainable in an industry that’s always changing.”
That focus on trust has proven to be more than a slogan. In an industry often marred by skepticism and overpromising, BWJ Travel has built credibility by creating a transparent commission structure, giving consultants 80 percent of each booking, with 20 percent reinvested into training and tools. The model has not only fueled growth but also created a sense of ownership among agents who see their success tied directly to the company’s mission.
While many host travel agencies emphasize profit-sharing or affiliate partnerships, BWJ Travel has taken a different approach. Rather than filtering applicants through lengthy interview rounds, the company allows aspiring consultants to prove themselves through real-world client interactions.
This is a way to disrupt existing hiring practices. By removing the layers of screening that might unconsciously create bias, the company creates access for a wide range of people — from stay- at-home parents to people shifting careers — all of whom share a common love of travel.
“We believe in giving people a shot,” says Jacob Sarkisyan. “You can’t teach passion or empathy, and those are the things that make a great travel consultant. Our goal is to find individuals who care about the experience as much as we do.”
This trust-based system has resulted in a community of consultants who feel more like family than employees. Agents receive hands-on mentorship, live training sessions twice a week, and 24/7 emergency support for clients in transit — a structure that mirrors the same family-style care their father instilled decades ago.
At the core of BWJ Travel's internal culture is The BWJ Exchange, a private social network that serves as a digital community hub for its agents. As the founders defined it, "a Facebook for BWJ," the platform enables consultants to share travel experiences, brainstorm ideas, and support each other across time zones.
That sense of community has become one of the agency's most effective retention strategies. New consultants entering the profession now have a peer group to build off each other with, instead of feeling the need to compete.
In recent years, technology has altered how travelers research, book and share their trip. However, the speed of automation often forces travelers to sacrifice the human touch. BWJ Travel's leadership sees this as an opportunity, not a threat.
With a custom-built Agent Portal that integrates booking tools, training modules, and performance tracking, the agency strikes a balance between digital efficiency and personal service. The platform gives consultants real-time access to supplier updates and client data without sacrificing the empathy that defines the BWJ brand.
“Our systems are designed to make life easier for our agents, not replace them,” Edwin explains. “We use technology to enhance relationships, not to automate them.”
Industry research supports this shift. A Phocuswright study found that nearly 70 percent of travelers prefer agencies that demonstrate transparency and personalized service — a statistic that underscores BWJ Travel’s philosophy of leading with trust.
Despite the company’s success, the founders admit that building trust hasn’t always been easy. In a post-pandemic world where many consumers associate online offers with scams or pyramid schemes, convincing new consultants to believe in a host model requires patience and consistency.
“People have been burned before,” Edwin acknowledges. “That’s why we show everything — how commissions work, how bookings are processed, where the money goes. When people see that honesty firsthand, they realize this isn’t about recruitment. It’s about creating real opportunities.”
The embrace of that openness has proven to be rewarding. As of today, every week BWJ Travel receives hundreds of inquiries from clients, and often the demand exceeds the capacity of their consultants. Instead of rushing to expand their team of consultants, the brothers have prioritized quality. Every new agent receives the same level of integrity and quality portrayed by the brand.
The growth of online platforms and digital booking engines have made the travel experience more accessible, but it has also made it less personal. The agencies doing the best in the current model are those that combine modern tools with the older values of travel. BWJ Travel's growth exemplifies that balance.
In many respects, the story of the company is less about reimagining travel and more about returning to the origins of travel, where a trip was more than a transaction, and an agent was more than just a middleman.
“We’ve seen the travel industry go through cycles,” Jacob reflects. “But at the end of the day, people want to be treated with respect and honesty. That’s what builds lifelong clients.”
It’s a belief shared by other travel professionals who see family-owned agencies as the moral compass of a changing market. According to Travel Weekly’s 2024 consumer trends report, travelers are increasingly gravitating toward agencies that emphasize personalization and human connection over high-volume sales.
BWJ Travel values inclusivity as an organization and with the clients it serves. With consultants from diverse backgrounds and identities, travelers can feel understood, heard, and seen, regardless of their race or budget. Many host agencies only embrace the luxuries of travel, but BWJ Travel has a variety of travelers, from first-times to more experienced travelers, not just the historically and collectively the failings in the travel industry. With travel, the focus is not one of selling exclusivity and access while degrading dialogue and reliability, it is simply about enjoying time together or perhaps for necessity to earn national endorsement, what with so many trusted, relatable, dependable travel experiences present within.
As BWJ Travel is growing nationally, the brothers do not forget the founding principle of the organization to allow families to travel together, not just together physically but culturally and emotionally. Edwin and Jacob constantly refer to the values training their father believes in, when they were a child and he offered the service of family togetherness, or when providing a remote hero a sales message for a new travel agent's first sale. Their business is a good business of relational transacting symbiotically to mutually succeed.
In the present travel landscape there is often conquered speed, scale, and automation which is great, but the slow personal individualized service planning is still relatable in the practice and valuable of each practice in the timeless and black values from family. So, from family and relationships, Edwin and Jacob are helping people travel not only with the family, or truly acknowledge the premier travel experience, but with the relations we all have and remembering.
