One year ago, Legato and Tern launched the travel industry’s first direct integration between a proprietary host agency back-office system and an agent workflow platform. Looking back, the integration wasn’t the biggest story. The bigger story is how one question helped change the way our industry thinks about technology.
One year ago, Legato and Tern announced something the travel industry hadn’t seen before. Together, we became the first host agency and travel technology platform to directly integrate a proprietary host agency back-office system with an agent workflow platform.
At the time, the announcement was about an integration. Looking back a year later, it feels like it was really about something much bigger.
For years, travel agents built successful businesses using systems that weren’t designed to work together. Client information lived in one place. Itineraries were built somewhere else. Sales were reported in another system entirely. Agents entered the same information multiple times, moved between platforms throughout the day, and created their own processes to bridge the gaps. It worked because agents made it work, but that didn’t mean it was the way it should be.
Somewhere along the way, the industry largely accepted disconnected systems as part of the job. If you wanted to run a successful travel business, duplicate work and disconnected technology were simply expected.
Legato never looked at it that way.
One of the philosophies that has guided our company is simple. If we can remove unnecessary work from an agent’s business and make it easier to run and grow, we should.
That belief isn’t about adding more technology. It isn’t about building features just because we can. It’s about taking a closer look at the work agents do every day and asking a simple question.
Does an agent really need to be doing this?
Jonathan Morris, Founder & President of Legato, has been asking that question for years.
“Agents have historically dealt with fragmented systems in order to provide their customers with a seamless experience. Too much weight was placed on the agent and not enough on the technology systems or larger organizations supporting them. It was an unfair burden that agents carried for years.”
Every hour an agent spends entering the same booking twice, moving information between systems, or trying to reconcile commissions is time that isn’t spent serving clients, building relationships, or growing a business. Those tasks may seem small on their own, but together they create an invisible workload that travel agents have learned to carry for years.
As we continued looking for ways to remove that burden, we realized we weren’t the only company asking those questions.
The team at Tern had reached many of the same conclusions.
“Advisors were running their whole business across three to six disconnected tools that didn’t talk to each other, re-entering the same client and trip details over and over and losing hours a day to admin,” said David Shull, Co-Founder and CEO of Tern.
Although Legato and Tern approached the problem from different directions, both companies arrived at the same conclusion. Technology should support the way agents work instead of expecting agents to work around technology.
That shared way of thinking became the foundation of our partnership.
From the beginning, this wasn’t about finding another integration opportunity. Legato wasn’t looking for another technology partner, and Tern wasn’t simply looking to add another host agency. Both companies were trying to solve a problem that had quietly become accepted across the industry.
Jonathan remembers realizing both leadership teams were approaching the challenge from the same perspective.
“Both leadership teams saw the same issue and knew we could do something about it that didn’t overstep into each other’s lane. It’s one of those really cool moments when meeting with people. You find that kindred spirit, and you know something special is coming.”
David felt that same alignment.
“Partnering with Legato was an easy yes. Legato and Tern were clearly asking the same question: how do we make the day-to-day of running a travel business better for advisors? Legato had built a reputation for backing its advisors and taking friction out of how they run their businesses, which is the exact belief Tern was founded on.”
That thinking led to the first direct integration between Tern and MontisPRO®. Instead of entering booking information into Tern and then reporting those same bookings separately in MontisPRO, agents could complete their work in one place and allow the information to flow directly into Legato’s back-office system.
The technology itself wasn’t the goal.
Removing unnecessary work was.
For Kristi McCullough of Harbor & Holiday Travel Company, the difference was immediate.
Before the integration, she built every itinerary in Tern and then recreated much of that same information in MontisPRO so her commissions could be tracked correctly. She constantly found herself double-checking confirmation numbers and worrying about whether she had forgotten to report a booking.
“I was constantly trying to remember to add it in both places. I didn’t want the commission to be lost because the numbers in MontisPRO might not match what the suppliers were sending.”
Today, that duplicate work is gone.
“It has completely eliminated my need to do twice the work and eliminated the possibility of making errors transferring over the confirmation and other information.”
Kristi’s experience wasn’t unique.
Shevoun Roper of Travel Is My Forte described the biggest improvement as eliminating duplicate reporting across complex itineraries with multiple suppliers.
“The biggest improvement has been eliminating duplicate data entry. Now, that reporting happens automatically when I mark the booking as complete in Tern. It has saved a considerable amount of administrative time while helping ensure my supplier bookings are reported promptly.”
For Cori Lee, the change was just as practical.
“Being able to log a trip in Tern, with the components, pricing, and everything else once and hit ‘Booked’… game changer. No more going back and forth between two different sites to log the booking.”
Jenn Wilson summed it up simply.
“It’s one less thing to think about every day, and that makes a tremendous difference.”
Every story was different. The outcome was remarkably consistent. Agents spent less time managing systems and more time running their businesses.
One year later, that’s what stands out.
Not simply that Legato and Tern built an integration, but what happened after.
When we announced our partnership, direct connections between host agency technology and agent workflow platforms were still relatively uncommon. Over the past year, that conversation has shifted. More technology companies are building integrations. More host agencies are investing in connected systems. More organizations are asking how they can remove duplicate work instead of expecting agents to manage around it.
We think that’s good for the industry.
Our goal was never to be the only company building connected technology. Our goal was to solve a problem our agents had been living with for years. If doing that helped demonstrate what was possible and encouraged more companies to invest in connected technology, everyone benefits.
Jonathan believes we’re only at the beginning.
“The industry is ripe for a tech revolution that ultimately ties fragmented systems together for the betterment of an entire industry. Legato and Tern are proud to lead that revolution in our respective spaces.”
David sees the same momentum.
“One year in, we’ve been thrilled to see how this integration has helped advisors. When advisors stop losing hours to duplicate work, they take on more clients and spend more of their time actually advising. It also showed the industry that a host agency and a technology partner can build around the same belief, that an advisor’s time is the asset worth protecting. That’s the model we think more of the industry will follow.”
Looking back, we don’t think this story is really about an integration.
It’s about what happens when companies stop accepting unnecessary work as part of the job and start asking whether there’s a better way.
The answer to that question led to an industry first. What happened next helped spark an industry shift.
At Legato, we’ll keep asking those questions. We’ll keep looking for opportunities to remove friction, simplify the business of selling travel, and invest in solutions that help agents spend more time serving clients and growing their businesses.
Because when agents spend less time working around technology, they have more time for the work that only they can do. And that’s where the future of this industry will be built.