Lomas Appreciation Week 2026 celebrated 45 years of Grupo Lomas by giving 178 travel advisors a taste of the hospitality, culture, food and experiences they spend their careers recommending to others.
Travel advisors spend their working lives thinking about someone else's vacation. Which hotel will make the family happy? Where should the couple celebrate an anniversary? What experience will become the story their clients tell when they get home? For one week in the Riviera Maya, Grupo Lomas turned that relationship around.
During Lomas Appreciation Week (LAW) 2026, travel advisors became the guests. They ate extraordinarily well, traded meetings for the Caribbean at Maroma Beach, got covered in slime at Aqua Nick™ Riviera Maya and were given practical tools for managing the pressures of an industry built around taking care of other people.
LAW does this every year, but 2026 carried particular meaning. Grupo Lomas is celebrating its 45th anniversary, turning its annual thank-you into a celebration of relationships that have grown alongside the Mexican tourism company since 1981.
This year's gathering welcomed 178 travel advisors, 115 from the United States and Canada and 63 from Mexico alongside tour operators representing markets across the Americas, the United Kingdom and Europe. Participation from Mexican advisors increased, while professionals from the MICE segment joined LAW for the first time.
“Our growth has never been ours alone,” said Dolores López Lira e Hinojo, Chairwoman & Founder of Grupo Lomas. “Travel advisors and our industry partners have believed in us, grown with us, and helped bring Mexico to travelers around the world. LAW is our opportunity to look them in the eye and say thank you, not only for what we have achieved together, but for the trust that continues to move us forward.”
A Thank-You You Can Actually Experience
There are plenty of ways to tell travel advisors about a destination. LAW takes the more enjoyable route: let them live it.
At El Dorado Royale, food became part of the welcome. The Food, Flavor & Stories Experience at Fuentes Culinary Theatre brought gastronomy and storytelling together, while the Legacy 45 Gastronomic Market celebrated the company's Mexican roots through food and culture. At Maroma Beach, the rhythm changed completely: Caribbean water, sand, brunch and time to simply enjoy one of the destinations many of these advisors regularly recommend to their clients.
Then came perhaps the least corporate moment of the week.
At Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Riviera Maya and Aqua Nick™ Riviera Maya, grown travel professionals were encouraged to behave a little less professionally. A dinner experience and Super Sliming put them on the receiving end of the unabashed fun normally associated with the families they send there.
There was something useful hidden inside all that fun. A resort can be explained through room categories, amenities and presentations, but firsthand experience gives an advisor something harder to replicate. It's one thing to describe a family resort across a desk or through a screen. It's another to know what the laughter sounds like when the slime actually falls.
Taking Care of the People Who Take Care of Travelers
LAW also acknowledged a less glamorous side of the travel business: taking care of other people's vacations can come with plenty of pressure.
During the Marketing Forum, updates on Grupo Lomas' brands and future direction were complemented by a session with Tavi Castro focused on practical breathing techniques, stress management and problem-solving. For professionals accustomed to handling missed connections, last-minute changes and other people's travel emergencies, the session briefly shifted the attention toward their own wellbeing.
It was a small but telling detail. Appreciation didn't only mean good food, beautiful beaches and celebration; it also meant offering something advisors could take home and use long after the week ended.
45 Years Are Easier to Understand Through People
Grupo Lomas was founded in 1981 by Dolores López Lira and José Luis Martínez Alday. Over the following four and a half decades, the Mexican family enterprise expanded across hospitality, destination management, attractions and travel experiences in the Mexican Caribbean and Baja California.
But anniversaries don't have to be measured only in years, properties or expansion.
A single recommendation can become a booking, then a referral, then a professional relationship that continues for years. Multiply that across markets and decades, and those partnerships become part of a company's history.
That is what makes celebrating 45 years alongside travel advisors feel particularly fitting. Their contribution isn't separate from the Grupo Lomas story; it is woven through it.
From Taking a Chance to Leaving a Legacy
By the final evening, the people being celebrated moved firmly into the spotlight.
The LAW Awards 2026 recognized professionals across categories reflecting sales performance, specialization and achievement, including Top Lomas Travel Producers and Top Wedding Producers. Three special recognitions gave that celebration a more personal narrative.
The Coco Award went to Ateet Ahuja of Indian Destination Wedding Inc., recognizing the courage to identify an opportunity and take the first step. The Palm Award honored Donna Daniels of Fox Travel in the United States and Canada and Linda Lou Magaña of Chile Mole Pozole in Mexico for resilience, adaptability and loyalty. The evening's highest distinction, the Lomas Legacy Award, went to Shelli Nornes of Romance Travel Group for long-term commitment and industry leadership.
Together, they traced a fitting progression: the courage to begin, the resilience to grow and the time it takes to build a legacy.
The Human Connection in an AI Travel Era
LAW is taking place at an interesting moment for the profession it celebrates. AI can recommend destinations, compare possibilities and build itineraries within seconds, and travelers are increasingly experimenting with those tools.
Yet human advice remains very much in the picture. A 2026 International Medical Group survey found that 33% of respondents were likely to use AI for travel planning, while 41% said they use a travel advisor or agent for at least some trips. Among prospective AI users, 75% expected to use the technology for recommendations and 70% for itinerary planning, but only 13% expected to use it for booking.
The numbers suggest less of a competition than an evolution. Technology can help travelers discover options faster; relationships, firsthand knowledge and human support continue to play a different role in turning those options into actual trips.
And firsthand knowledge was everywhere at LAW.
The advisors leaving the Riviera Maya didn't simply hear about a culinary experience, Maroma Beach or Aqua Nick™. They ate the food. They stood on the beach. Some of them got slimed.
For a few days, the people who spend their careers helping others have extraordinary vacations got to be the guests themselves.
Originally published by FerrConn Hospitality Insider
