Tern's events team invited Travel Biz Boss back for its second annual User Conference, and being the nerds we are, we couldn't say yes fast enough. Korrine held down the fort while Erin headed to New Orleans.
Last year, we had the honor of joining Tern on Virgin Voyages' Brilliant Lady for their conference at sea. While we were still at sea, Tern shipped features that advisors had raised in live feedback sessions earlier in the trip.
This year, they might have outdone themselves. No ship this time, but the same fuel: live feedback, features released as a direct result of that feedback, the anticipation of what Tern would release next, and panels ready to dig into each new feature the moment it launched.
Erin spent the weekend in New Orleans wearing three hats: systems nerd, excited user, and honored presenter. She co-presented Workflows, Automations and AI Leveled Up with Klo Oxford and met one-on-one with advisors throughout the event. She drank many Red Bulls, said many words per minute, and slept whenever possible. Here's her recap.
Apple Keynote meets Lollapalooza
I knew something special was happening the second I pulled into the Hilton Riverside. You could just feel it. Advisors I'd only known as names in my inbox or in the Facebook group were suddenly right there in 3-D, and some of them were literally jumping up and down to finally meet each other. It was really amazing to see.
If you've ever joined a Tern webinar, this energy won't surprise you. Every single one opens with a countdown clock and get-hyped music in the background ("The Greatest Show" from The Greatest Showman is a regular), and suddenly you're at Disney's Pleasure Island waiting for the nightly New Year's Eve countdown. About 10 seconds out, the chat starts popping off, and you can almost feel the electricity before the team steps "on stage."
So of course the opening keynote at The Fillmore took that same energy and made it live. If an Apple keynote had a baby with Lollapalooza, that's the energy I want you to imagine: Tern team members playing air guitar to Mötley Crüe in the background, and that unmistakable feeling that we were all part of something epic. Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, the food and catering were absolutely AMAZING.
Later in the week, a rep from Riverside Cruises told me there's something different about Tern users. They're right, and I think I know why: for advisors, Tern has always felt like their startup as much as the founders'.
Early users backed a company attempting something bold, new, and honestly, gutsy. The team listened closely and built the platform around what advisors said worked and what didn't. Whether you're part of the founding flock or signed up this morning, you feel truly heard.
No, we're not technically investors. But we invested our time, our trust, our testing, and our businesses, and it paid off. There's something a little human about guessing right on a bet and knowing you were right to take the chance. So when a room full of users feels like they helped build this thing, it's because they did.
The closing keynote on Saturday drove that home. Two days after launching 3 new products, Tern announced 20 more features that engineers built on-site from feedback advisors gave that week. (Yes, people wrote feature requests on sticky notes, and yes, it worked.) Every time a new one hit the screen, Klo ran down the aisle high-fiving us in the front row, and by feature 20 we were basically teens at a Beatles show.
Then Tern sent us off in true New Orleans style with a farewell reception at Mardi Gras World. If you've never been, it's basically a factory of floats. I have a theory that they come to life Toy Story-style when everyone goes home, but no one has confirmed this idea yet. You wander past float after float from past parades (and maybe a few future ones), and just when you think you've seen it all, you step into a garden that felt like Epcot took a stab at a New Orleans pavilion: a simulated sky, twinkle lights, trees and greenery, covered bridges, and plenty of wandering space. I'm told the shrimp and grits were fantastic, but my shellfish allergy and I stuck with the chicken wings, which, to this day, are some of the best I've ever had. It was absolutely beautiful, and such a wonderful way to end the conference.
Before I dive into the launches, a quick note. This is going to be a very Tern-heavy recap. I mean, it was a Tern conference, for crying out loud. But I don't work for Tern. I respect them and what they're building, but my loyalty is to the time-starved advisors who need a system that works. So if I sound excited or a little Tern-leaning, it's because I know so many advisors who use Tern are going to get a kick out of what launched and what's coming next.
So here's what launched, what's still in beta, and what might be worth a closer look.
The Big Three
The Tern advisor app (open beta). Tern's most-requested feature is finally here. You can browse and edit trips from your phone, add a cabin or hotel in the middle of a client call, search by confirmation number, and email clients right from the app. PRAISE the tech gods, we have an app.
Email marketing suite (open beta, free to all users). This is a full campaign builder right inside Tern, with a drag-and-drop editor and branded headers. You can even build segments just by asking AI chat in plain language, like "clients who sailed Royal Caribbean more than two years ago and have no upcoming trip." Opt-in collection and one-click unsubscribe come built in, and new accounts warm up gradually, starting at 100 emails a day and doubling daily up to 5,000. Sending from your own domain is coming soon, and there's already talk of landing page opt-ins (think the opt-in forms you'd build in Flodesk).
Hotels by Tern (open beta). Now you can quote and book live hotel rates right from the itinerary. Your client authorizes payment through the same flow they already know, and the rate refreshes the moment they open it. A few things to know before you dive in:
Your agency opts in, not you. The IATA or CLIA credential holder signs up, and every advisor under the agency gets access. Hosted advisors, your host agency has to opt in.
It costs nothing extra beyond your Tern subscription.
Commission starts at a flat 10%, paid to your agency every Friday after the client checks out.
Stays start November 16.
Tern launched 24/7 support alongside it and reconfirms every booking.
Compare before you promise a deal. Rates come from a wholesaler, so after fees they sometimes beat retail and sometimes don't. Tern isn't promising you the lowest rate, but this is definitely the easiest way to pull a quick hotel booking into the itinerary.
Not opting in? The new Hotel Library is live for everyone. Even if your agency skips Hotels by Tern booking, you still get the new Hotel Library. Tern invested in content creators to shoot fresh property photos, so you're no longer stuck with outdated pics from the 1980s, two refurbishments ago.
Learn more about Hotels by Tern.
The 20 new features worth your attention
Tern built all 20 of these from conference feedback, so here are the ones I'd look at first, with anything still in beta clearly labeled.
For your travelers
Quick itinerary comparison. Put cruise, ship, or resort options side by side in one trip, and let clients compare cover photos, prices, and day-by-day plans before picking their favorite on the web or in the Tern traveler app. Goodbye, vertical options. HELLO, left-to-right viewing.
Itinerary countdown timer. Tern finally gave your clients their own countdown clock. It sits at the top of the itinerary in your brand color and font, then turns into a travel day badge on departure day. You can turn it on for a single itinerary or for every new one in your brand settings, so if you haven't set a brand color yet, now's the time. On the advisor side, your trips board now shows days to departure, too.
Child rates. Add age bands to any room priced by occupancy, and when you have travelers' dates of birth, Tern works out each child's age at check-in and builds the right rate into the room price. Family trips and weddings, minus the calculator.
A new hotel photo gallery. Clients see the whole property in one grid, sorted into rooms, dining, facilities, and more.
In-app messaging (rolling out next week). Clients message you from their itinerary or the traveler app, and every conversation stays with the trip in its own Messages tab.
Required forms on trips (closed beta). Require a traveler details form before clients authorize payment, so you have passport numbers and the rest in hand before any money moves.
Traveler profiles (closed beta). When a traveler signs in, their profile pre-fills every new form with the details they've already submitted, so they just review what's there and add what's new. They can also add companions from the people they've traveled with before, without re-entering anyone who's already a contact. No more typing the same details over and over, for them or for you, which saves SO MUCH TIME. Like required forms, it's invite-only for now.
For your day-to-day
New automation triggers. Workflows can now start when deposits, installments, and final payments are due or paid, and when your commission arrives. Send a reminder three days before a deposit is due, or move a trip to Paid in Full the moment the final payment clears.
Forms that apply tags. Choose a tag for the person who submits a form and another for the trip. When a response comes in, the tags apply and any workflows tied to them start on their own, so honeymoon inquiries can head one way and cruise inquiries can choose another adventure.
In-app notification center. A new spot in the top navigation shows when a client picks a room or option, submits a form, or when someone assigns you a task. Push notifications in the advisor app are coming soon.
Also new, and my personal favorite
Copy shared folders in one step. Klo and I literally jumped up and down for this one. If you've ever shared a folder of templates with your team and then had to say, "Sorry, open each email and click Make a copy, one at a time, and then do that 300 more times," you know exactly why. Now the whole folder copies in one click, which will save us hours at Travel Biz Boss and save you hours every time you grab a shared template folder. And yes, subfolders are included!
Add several library activities to a trip at once.
No more "Stay at" in front of every hotel you add to a trip. Small change, huge relief.
Client email on payment authorizations, right next to their card and billing details.
Archive contacts in bulk for faster cleanup.
For agency owners
Sales goals. Set targets for the agency or each advisor, based on sales or commission received, and track progress in the Back Office. You decide what advisors see, from nothing at all to everyone's totals. This will really incentivize your Monica Gellers, and maybe motivate your Chandler Bings to give more of a hoot.
Supplier profiles and expected commission. Supplier profiles now work like a supplier CRM, with pinned resources, contacts, and admin-only notes. Set a default commission rate per category, fine-tune it per supplier, and Tern fills in expected commission on your advisors' bookings.
Mentee names on mentor split lines, and a one-click copy of the Net amount on Ready to pay.
See all 20 features on Tern's site.
The AI updates, plus four settings to change
Tern also replaced its old AI tiers with Standard and Premium models, which means you get a lot more usage before you hit a limit, and the Notetaker is now included at no extra cost to your AI usage limits.
Tern's AI session had some of the most practical advice of the week, and these are the four changes I'd make first:
Switch chat to Standard. The model picker remembers whatever you used last, so it's worth a quick check. Standard handles quick jobs like contact updates and simple trip edits, which leaves Premium for the long, multi-step tasks.
Set your writing style under Business > Branding: your tone, words to avoid, and phrases you love. Shortcut: have an AI review a few of your real client emails, summarize your style, and paste that in.
Save one prompt to your Prompt Library. Pick something you do every week, like building a trip from a supplier quote, and then you can call it by name in chat instead of retyping it every time.
Turn on Smart Inbox for supplier confirmations only. It suggests actions from incoming emails, and nothing happens until you approve them. Once you trust it, you can add traveler emails too.
Bonus move: open AI chat from inside a trip and ask it to review the trip for mistakes or anything you missed. It's like a second set of eyes that never gets tired of reading confirmation numbers.
Coming soon (not live yet)
Tern also shared a few plans on stage. These aren't live yet, so think of them as what's coming next rather than features you can use today:
Advisor app: push notifications.
Email marketing: sending from your own domain, agency-level opt-in, and an embeddable signup form for your website.
Hotels by Tern: a second inventory partner, more commission flexibility, and more payment options.
For agencies: agent billing (entering beta) and an accounting suite planned for early 2027.
Groups: a bigger overhaul, including more flexible payment splitting.
Connections: more ways to link Tern with outside tools and AI assistants.
The question nobody wants to ask out loud
While I was in New Orleans, one advisor asked me something I suspect a lot of us have quietly wondered: this is all great, but what happens when they sell? What happens when everyone's gone and the platform changes?
It's a fair question. In the tech world, the story usually goes that you build, you sell, and you take the win, so when your whole business runs on one platform, of course that thought keeps you up at night.
For me, though, it comes down to trust. Tern has been open from the start about its intentions, its goals, who has invested, and who sits on the board. They had other funding offers, and they chose to wait for investors who were actually aligned with them.
You could hear that alignment at the Day 2 investor panel. Tern's investors described themselves as patient, long-term partners rather than a quick-flip crowd. They talked about a 10 to 15 year horizon, about companies that stay independent and keep growing, and about backing companies that support travel advisors instead of trying to replace them. They were also clear that the founders run the company, not the investors.
It also helps to remember that Tern's founders have done this before. They were part of the core team at another successful startup, where they worked, watched, and learned how they wanted to run a company once the decisions were theirs to make.
So in the end, you either trust that this team is in it for the long haul, or you don't. I do.
In full disclosure, I worked at Tern for almost a year before joining Travel Biz Boss, so I know the humans behind it. I know how hard they work and how badly they want advisors to succeed. They're never going to look at the platform and say, "OK, that's good enough." They're always going to ask, "What's next?" and then make a plan to make it better.
Where to learn more
Tern is running free office hours and webinars on the new launches through mid-November:
Hotels by Tern office hours: Thursdays, Oct 29, Nov 5, and Nov 12, 3 pm
Office Hours: Automate Your Process in Tern: Mon, Nov 2, 3 pm
Office Hours: Use AI with Tern: Tue, Nov 3, 12 pm
Webinar: Tern x Travel Insured International: Tue, Nov 3, 4 pm
Webinar: How to win with email marketing, by Moxie & Fourth: Thu, Nov 19, 4 pm
You can register on Tern's events page, and if you missed the keynotes, the replays are on Tern's YouTube channel.
And if you have an idea for what Tern should build next, share it in Tern's feedback platform. Twenty new features in three days? Let's just say they're reading those product requests.
If you're looking at all these new automation triggers and tagged forms thinking, "Oh crap, now what?" I've got you. That's exactly what a Systems Tune-Up is for, and I'd love to help you put these new features to work in your business.
A rising tide
And here's the thing. I know we're talking about the Tern conference, but the entire travel industry is changing when it comes to CRMs, and our friends at TravelJoy and Travefy are taking big leaps that are paying off too.
Honestly, there's never been a better time to be a travel CRM user, because everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is listening now and wants to keep your business. Customer service has gotten better, features are coming out faster, and AI is showing up in new ways that support advisors instead of replacing them.
I don't know if Tern started this wave, but I'm glad we've all caught it, because everyone is benefiting from the rising tide.
