Uncover the highlights of the premier event in travel nursing with our recent webinar, “TravCon Recap: The Inside Scoop,” now available on our YouTube channel.
This engaging session features Oliver Feakins, CEO of TravelNurseSource and AlliedTravelCareers, and Steve Curtin, CEO of TravCon and The Gypsy Nurse, as they share vivid firsthand accounts from the conference that captivated the travel healthcare community.
Delve into the informative exchange as they reflect on industry trends, pivotal themes, and memorable stories that defined TravCon.
Whether you attended or missed the event, this recap offers an invaluable perspective on the dynamics driving the sector forward. Don’t forget to check out the full transcript below and get inspired by the camaraderie and insights that marked this year’s event!
Want to exhibit at TravCon 2025? Register today!
Oliver
Hi everybody! Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us at the TravCon recap, the official. Looking forward to having a good conversation here. We’re going to slow roll the entrance here as we wait for some people to jump in here. But yeah, we’ll get it started.
Yeah, so for those of you that don’t know, my name is Oliver Feakins, I’m the CEO of TrackFive. We own TravelNurseSource, AlliedTravelCareers, and LocumJobsOnline.
Also, attended TravCon. Exhibited at TravCon, I should say. Very happy to be there as well. It was an awesome show. For those of you who have not been to TravCon before, either as an attendee or an exhibitor, it’s a really great show getting to interact with – it’s the only show I know where we can interact with travelers in that capacity and really have those conversations, make those relationships, validate our best practices, models, and, between the agencies and the nurses, boy, was there a lot of talking going on at TravCon.
So, yeah, without further ado, I think I want to introduce Steve Curtin. Steve, give us the Twitter bio of yourself and also how you guys got involved in TravCon and how the whole thing here.
Steve
Sure, Oliver. Well, great to see you. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, the quick version is I’m the CEO of The Gypsy Nurse and TravCon. TravCon became part of The Gypsy Nurse about three years ago, back in 2022. So we’re really happy to have that as part of our overall platform.
I’ve been involved with The Gypsy Nurse for – since 2017, and became CEO in 2019, so about five and a half years I’ve been CEO of The Gypsy Nurse. Prior to that, as you may recall, I’ve been involved with a number of different healthcare staffing firms. Going way back, actually, I formed one of the first online communities for nurses, along with a couple of other folks including Randy Holloran, who you might remember. One of the industry leaders in terms of healthcare staffing. We formed an online community called Nurse Together. So that’s really how I got started in the whole aspect of healthcare online communities.
Oliver
Great, great. Absolutely. Definitely know Randy. And Steve’s a veteran in the industry. For those of you guys who don’t know him, he’s a wealth of knowledge and an all-around good guy. We used to work together in previous organizations as well here, so I’ve known him for many years. He’s a fantastic person to have on the podcast right now.
Guys, what we’re gonna do and before we get started just a couple housekeeping things. On our podcast here, you have the ability on the right side to add chat comments. If you have a comment to what we’re saying, please make this interactive. As we see them or I see them, we’ll call them out. Go ahead. Throw your two cents on the chat if you agree, disagree, want to add something for the group that would be really helpful. Also, there’s questions and polls. So if you guys want to do a poll, if you want to ask some questions, we’re going to get to them at the end here. If we see something hyper-relevant, we’ll bring it into the conversation.
But what we want to try and do is address this in a couple different ways. So we want to talk a little bit about TravCon as well. For those of you who weren’t there, what was happening there and how it went and give you a little sense of what you missed. We’re going to talk a little bit about what we all heard and mainly what Steve saw too and spoke to as regarding the candidates, what the big buzz and topics of conversations were for the travel candidates and then also just with all the agencies that are there, everything that was being said and mentioned in those agencies.
And hopefully this relates to a lot of you guys. I see some of you were already there. So, yeah, let’s go ahead and start with, I guess, TravCon in general. Steve, how did this year go compared to other years? What was your general impression or thoughts on the completion of the event? How do you feel?
Steve
Well, I feel like I’m starting to catch my second wind at this point. As you know and we’ve been communicating over the summer, TravCon is a major event. And while people think of it as a three or four-day one-off event, it’s really an all-year-round thing now in terms of planning, operational planning, and marketing, those sorts of things. So, just kind of catching our breath after the conference.
But overall, we were very pleased with the results of this year’s conference. Obviously, it’s been a very difficult year for the industry post-COVID, and a lot of agencies, as well as travelers, are resetting and looking at the future.
But TravCon has been around for 16 years. This is my third year of involvement, as mentioned, and this was an excellent year. We had less attendance than we had the prior two years, but frankly, that was to be expected. With the highs of COVID, the number of people that were in the industry traveling at the time, the number of agencies, and so forth, it was to be expected that we would have a little bit lesser attendance this year as well as fewer exhibitors. We had a little over a thousand attendees, which we were very pleased with, and we had close to 120 exhibitors, so we’re not that far off from previous years, but certainly, we were down a little bit.
One of the things that people did comment on, both travelers and exhibitors, was the fact that they felt that this year’s show, because it was a little bit smaller, was a little bit more intimate. There was more engagement, more opportunity for conversation. One of the critiques, ironically, over the past two years prior to this was that we had gotten too big. There were just too many people; it was a little bit overwhelming.
So I think with a fewer number of attendees over the highs of the last couple of years and a little bit fewer exhibitors, we had a little bit more engaging conversations, and I think that people felt like they were able to relax a little bit more. So we were very pleased operationally. We thought it went extremely smooth. 92% of our exhibitors rated the experience very favorably. So we were very pleased with it overall. Great feedback coming in.
Oliver
Yeah, that’s great. And I can second that. It was really nice to be able to have those conversations and have that space. At TravelNurseSource, what we did was product marketing and product feedback with the nurses. We don’t go to take any names or anything like that; we’ll essentially – we go to listen.
And, to be honest, agencies, I think that’s where the value is—listening more than talking at these shows. We went over our future plans, we asked questions about changes in their preferences and behaviors since COVID. We really wanted to learn, now that we’re out of COVID a couple of years and things are resetting.
Nurses, therapists, techs—what does that mean for you? What’s changed? We took hundreds of surveys, we had hundreds of conversations. To your point, Steve, because the attendance was slightly down over the COVID highs, which I thought was good, we were able to have those conversations. But even then, we still thought there were a ton of travelers, which was positive. So much so that next year we’re going to bring more people as well. We thought it was really, really beneficial. It’s funny, too—I remember we were at the inaugural TravCon at the Alexis Motel in Vegas off-strip.
Steve
That goes back a few years.
Oliver
Yeah, it was a motel, a resort, and one big room with 20 agencies with tables around the perimeter and like 150 travelers, and we thought it was great then. So, it’s even gotten better, and now it’s light-years away from what it was. It’s a professional show, and it’s awesome, so great work to you guys.
Steve
Well, thank you. A number of the – as a quick aside – a number of the original folks, original founders are still with us. They tell me stories about those days going way back, 15, 16 years ago about its origins and so forth. It’s really amazing to see how far it’s come.
Oliver
Yeah, absolutely. Well, talking about candidates, let’s start there real quick. I know I had a chance to sit with some travelers, and we talked to hundreds of travelers. We sat at a bunch of the roundtables. There is some definite palpable sentiment and emotions from the travelers as it relates to the current state of the travel healthcare market. I can’t say they were positive, not all correct, but there were some really strong opinions. Steve, what did you hear from the crop of travel candidates that were there? What were the main points of what you were hearing?
Steve
Yeah, certainly the travelers that we spoke to and then the agencies that we spoke to that were talking to the travelers, similar feedback was coming back.
Number one, obviously pay rates have changed substantially. There’s no question about that. There’s no debate about that. So I think there are veteran travelers, and we have people that have been going to TravCon for 10, 12 years, so we have a lot of people that continue to go, but the veteran travelers, this to them is more back to the norm, if you will, back to the way pay used to be pre-COVID. So they have expected this. And while they certainly would like to see pay rates higher, this is not unexpected.
For the newer travelers, those that came in right around COVID and continue through the pandemic, I think it’s a bit of a surprise to them. And we heard the phrase from some of them paraphrasing, “We’re waiting for the rates to come back.” Well, they may not come back, or they may not come back to pre-COVID days. So it’s this, or COVID days, I should say.
It’s this aspect of, what does the future hold? This aspect of the new reality and going back to the fundamentals of traveling. I mean, people travel because of pay. But it’s also about seeing different cities and different geographies, making new friends, new experiences. I think a lot of people are starting to refocus on that versus the pay.
Oliver
Yeah, and it’s interesting. The table that I set up, I asked the question, “How are you guys finding, how are you ladies finding the current market?” And man, they went off. I feel like that group of half a dozen nurses I was speaking to really embodied the entire sentiment, which was, “Oh, we’re fed up.” They’re angry, they’re frustrated, and we’re coming back with, “Why are you frustrated?” “Well, we’re being lied to by the agencies.” “How are you being lied to by the agences?” “Well, the pay rates are horrible and we know they’re hoarding all this money. They’re just greasing their pockets, paying us nothing while sitting on this big bag of cash.”
Little do they know what the state of the industry is and has been for the last couple of years. I was sharing a little bit with them, but there seems to be this sentiment of distrust, which is completely unfounded other than just their perception that they’re leaving money on the table.
It’s interesting too that you talked about pay. Dancing around pay with the recruiting. In COVID, that’s what we led with—massive weekly stipends on contracts during COVID with built-in overtime that sometimes rivaled physician pay. They were incredible. As a muscle memory for our recruiting teams, we’re so used to leading with that and that’s what everybody wants to talk about.
I think as a recruiting industry, we’ve really had to dust off the other parts of the assignment, right? Like to your point, it’s not just about pay; it’s about other things, like location. We’re so predisposed to hit right on pay and we stumble as an industry when it comes to talking about it without pay.
But if you talk to some of these providers, it is pay, but it’s also not. So when we did our surveys at the conference and we asked what was the most important thing, it was always pay, pay, pay, pay, pay. So then we’d say, “Okay, so if it was a different location but paid more, you’d be interested? If it was a different facility type or the agency had a poor reputation, you’d take that as long as you’re being paid more?” And they said, “Oh no.” I’m like, “Okay, so it’s not about pay. It’s pay is part of the conversation,” which really gives credence to – it’s about pay, but it’s really not. Did you hear anything like that?
Steve
Yeah, it… so, going back to your first statement about the distrust, unfortunately, there is that level of disconnect at times between the travelers and the agencies. As you know, I’ve been involved with The Gypsy Nurse now for a number of years. We have our Facebook discussion groups and there’s always this portion of trust and “Am I getting the best package?” and those sorts of things.
And yeah, that’s been going on for a number of years, and I think it’s up to the agencies to make sure to communicate and have a level of connect with their travelers and a level of transparency, in fact, in terms of the market and what to expect for pay and so on and so forth.
But I think the other component is really about getting back to what makes somebody want to travel. I think there is an aspect of pay that’s like… it has to be at a certain level, right? I mean, it has to be at a certain level for the traveler to make them want to take on the difficult world of travel nursing or just travel healthcare in general. But once that level has been met, then you have to think about the other reasons that you want to travel.
So I think that’s where, when you’re talking about some of the disparity between the pay and the comments you’re getting from the travelers, it needs to be, okay, once you’ve reached a certain level of pay that is acceptable, what are the other reasons that you want to travel or go on those assignments? That’s really what it’s all about.
Oliver
And it’s interesting. We were speaking with an agency yesterday. We were doing some recruiter training for them, and one of them had a really great talk track that they were using with travelers, specifically travelers that are coming in saying, “Look, I only want to see jobs if they’re maxed at this per week or no less than this per week. This is all I’m interested in. Don’t show me anything more.”
One of the recruiters had a really great talk track that was something along the lines of, “Great. You’re telling me if I see something that has XYZ or a really great opportunity or something that has this built-in benefit, but it’s slightly below that rate, I shouldn’t send it your way?” And the conversation immediately slipped to, “Well, yeah, send it my way.” But wait a minute, you just told me if it’s… so is it pay, or is it these other things?
Sometimes it’s really level setting. One thing where we’ve seen this recently as a platform is during COVID, everybody was pay-centric. It was requirement one, two, three, right? So we would match jobs and match candidates to jobs on our platform in the back end and promote inventory, with pay rate being one of the, if not the main factor, and location being interchangeable, so to speak.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen that model completely crumble in front of our eyes because, to be honest, you used to be able to get a nurse to go to Nome, Alaska, and leave their home in Florida because the pay rates were that darn good. Well, now they’re not. And to be honest, they’re not that much better than perm, especially with some of the bonuses the hospitals are offering and the health systems and things like that.
So what we’re seeing is this new breed of travelers redefine, in more of a local, regional. When I say local, obviously we have like the 50-mile radius at times, the most majority of them, but there are some facilities that are working below that and subsidizing that. But that kind of like where can I go up to two hours from my home, still be a traveler, still make a little bit more, but still come home to feed the cat on the weekends?
And for us as a platform, we’ve completely had to redo our algorithms from scratch to basically include that preference. And that was echoed at the show. They’re all looking to stay relatively close. And I think that’s a relatively new occurrence. Would you agree?
Steve
I agree. It’s kind of a new dynamic, and I get it. Because once you start talking about the pay, people want to maximize their pay because, on the whole, it’s lower. So they’re saying, how can I still qualify as a traveler and yet still get the benefits of being close to home, being able to go back when needed, and so forth? I’m not a tax attorney, so we don’t do tax advice. There’s a number of great articles on The Gypsy Nurse that does involve tax advice, but I think there is that balancing point.
I will say that if you flip the switch a little bit, there are travelers, and I think it’s probably some of the newer travelers, that really want to expand their horizons and go the other way, which is, I really want to try something exotic. I really want to experience a different part of the country, different geographies, big cities, small towns, rural, those sorts of things that are trying to expand their horizons as well.
I think some of that is kind of a life experience thing. So we are seeing some of that. Some of that is just expanding their professional experience, but yes, I would say this aspect of being closer to home is certainly a new phenomenon over the last couple of years.
Oliver
Yeah. And, as we’re talking about location and secondary interests, I mean, obviously we’re still saying pay is supreme. Also noticing that the candidates are much—I’m going to, this is a loaded statement, but on the whole, loyalty seems to be a little bit less than what it was during COVID when there were pay rates to back them up. So what I mean by that is we’re seeing a lot more comparison shopping on rates.
For example, we see data that somebody will apply to us or whoever, you guys or Vivian or Wanderly or whatever. They’re in discussions with an agency, even submitted to an agency. And while they’re in submission, they’re even accepted, they’re back on the sites comparing to see if anyone else is posting a similar job in the location for more money.
And it’s not necessarily a platform thing. It’s a candidate thing at this point. They’re leaving, they’re backing out of assignments, they’re not starting, they’re ghosting during submissions in certain cases as an industry because they’re just kind of continually shopping throughout that process.
It really speaks to the need for agencies to protect their investment. A lot of the agencies will think, well great, once I have a submission, once I have placement, they’re good to go on to the next. And what’s proving really evident here is that the agencies really have to double down at that point and walk them to the front door.
I liken it to walking my kindergartner to her classroom every day. Like, I can’t just drop her off in the parking lot. I have to walk her to the door. So, you got to do the same thing with the candidates, unfortunately, because there are other agencies that are just—everyone has pressure right now, right? And everyone is going after those candidates and they don’t care if they’ve already had a submission with somebody else or whatnot. If they can get them, they will. So, I mean, I don’t know. Does that resonate with you at all, Steve?
Steve
It does. It does. You bring up some great points. And I think it, there’s a couple of things to take away from this. I mean, number one, and I’m not a clinician, so I have not traveled, but I’ve been around it for a long time. It is a free market. And the travelers have every right to go and try and find the best deal that they can. And I don’t begrudge that, I don’t blame them for that at all, right? I mean, we all would want to get the best deal that we can for ourselves in terms of the financials or the overall packaging.
That said, if you are jumping around for an extra dollar or so in your pay rate, you have to be mindful of the relationships and the recruiters in the agencies that you’ve worked with and that have treated you well over the years. I think that once you find that great fit, and it may be with two or three different agencies, I’m not saying it’s just one, but once you find that great fit, the return on getting a little bit more money versus the benefits of establishing that trust, that relationship, that transparency, that communication, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it?
And that’s going back to where we have the relationship component of it. I mean, it just gets back to some of the basics of this overall business, which is the agencies and the recruiters creating a relationship and creating a trust with the travelers. I mean, I think most travelers in a perfect world would only want to work with one or two agencies, assuming that the pay rates are decent and so forth. I don’t think they want to bounce around.
And that’s why, to your point, it’s so important to establish that initial connection, that transparency, and as you said, walk them to the front door. Stay in touch with them throughout the assignment. If an assignment isn’t a fit, that’s fine. Be upfront about it and try and find something else. Don’t try and fit somebody into an assignment that’s not going to work for them.
Oliver
Yeah, it’s almost like we have candidate retention or re-enlistment bonuses and just trying to retain that talent as long as possible on the books. It sounds like what I’m hearing, Steve, is that these agencies really need to bring that forward to like post submission pre-start. Like the retention, relationship-building process needs to really start like right away like from profile completion or submission onwards as if they’re placed.
Steve
Well, any, and Oliver, you’ve been doing this for a long time as well, I think anybody in agency management will tell you, from a pure business perspective, it is the extensions that really are the most profitable for them. So it’s this aspect of getting somebody into an assignment and being able to extend them for multiple periods or certainly being able to once you have recruited them, if they finish assignment, quickly put them into another assignment.
The churn is not as profitable for an agency as this continuous level of assignments, and again, a lot of that will simply boil down to the relationship between the recruiter and the traveler, the agency and the traveler, and maintaining that. That’s another podcast for another time, but there’s so many components to successful agency-recruiter relationships. You can introduce all the technology in the world that you want, but at the end of the day, it’s really about how the traveler feels that they’re being treated by the recruiter and the agency. That’s, I think, what really counts.
Oliver
Yeah, Regina just threw something in the chat really good. And Regina, I empathize with you severely on this because I can feel that. She goes, yes, we’ve had travelers accept packages, be willing to be submitted, interview offered, then just decide it’s not enough. It’s very frustrating, but all we have to do is minimize backing out again. As an owner, many times I’ll reach out and call the traveler – that’s awesome – to see how we can create a more successful assignment.
I mean, sometimes that’s what it takes. Whether it be phone calls, Starbucks gift cards, check-ins, that personal touch. People are less likely to back out if they have a semblance of a personal relationship with a recruiter. Travel nursing, out of all the disciplines, travel nursing specifically is the medium that tends to be more, I guess, aligned with a personal relationship with a recruiter, as other industries are kind of agnostic and they don’t really have that. I mean, travel nurses are the ones that call the recruiters at two in the morning.
Steve
Absolutely.
Oliver
I feel like the pathway is there. During COVID, it was just transactional. Go, go, go, go, go. But, now we’ve got to take a step back and really, again, walk them to the door, really find really unique ways to get that going or incentivize the nurse to continue to move forward with the traveler.
Steve
100%. You just hit on a word that I want to emphasize, this aspect of transaction. There certainly is a business transaction component to the agency-traveler relationship. I mean, that certainly is there. But there’s also the aspect of a relationship and building that relationship. And that may seem fluffy and out there, but the fact of the matter is it is about establishing relationships, and I think that the travelers will stay with the agencies and the agencies will stick with the travelers if they can build that relationship.
It’s by going the extra mile, it is by that constant communication pre-assignment, during the assignment, post-assignment, getting more assignments. It is a continuum because you know what? Just because you don’t place somebody tomorrow doesn’t mean you won’t place them in three months or six months.
Staffing is such, and you and I have talked about this many times one-on-one, staffing is such a…what have you done for me lately business? It’s an immediate business. It’s the short game, if you will, versus the long game, and it’s pressure-packed. People want to place somebody now. But the reality is, is that sometimes you have to let that relationship grow over time. And if you do, eventually that traveler will come back to your agency and stay with you. It’s very important to remember.
Oliver
Yeah, and it’s hard, right? Those of us who’ve been in the business, which is I think everybody on this webinar. Pre-COVID, it wasn’t as transactional as it was during COVID and now is still perceived to this day. It was a longer-term game. It was, and it’s easy for us to say like it takes a little bit longer to place now, which obviously it does. Time to placement, I think, is double what it was, if not triple what it was during COVID.
But it’s really tough to do that with such the financial pressure on our agency partners and your agency partners right now. I mean, I think I can feel through the webinar the frustration on the agency side with the amount of financial pressure. I mean, we’re talking at SIA with the MSP, VMS fees going up, cost of housing increases, all the cost of goods sold have just soared.
Meanwhile, all the agencies are getting depressed like, holy hell, on the pay rates, the travelers are wanting more. And agencies are being squeezed down to single-digit margins. And for some of them, they need to place right now. And unfortunately, that juxtaposes against reality. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen. And some of it’s also job supply. Job supply is down from where it was, and there sometimes just isn’t a way to put a square in a round hole. That doesn’t exist right now. It doesn’t mean it will or it won’t in the future, but it’s just not necessarily possible.
This is a good segue into the agency side of the show here. And I know you spent a lot of time, not just as your capacity at Gypsy Nurse, but also capacity at TravCon. What was it like signing up agencies to exhibit at TravCon? Because I can imagine that, and tell me if I’m wrong, but with rates being depressed and everyone under financial duress, if you will, over the last year, it was a sizeable investment for agencies to pack up and come over to TravCon and make that expense. I’m curious how those conversations went. And I really, I think it’s great for the ones that did, us included, I think it was well worth every penny.
But I’m curious how that went on your end.
Steve
Yeah, it was definitely a more challenging sales year for 2024 than it had been certainly in ‘22 and ‘23. Yeah. Just as you said, it’s been a very challenging really couple of years for agencies at this point, for all the reasons that you mentioned.
TravCon, there are different components to it that people have to keep in mind when they budget for it. We try and keep the exhibitor rates very reasonable because there’s obviously a lot cost associated with putting on a conference as we do. But there’s flight, there’s hotel, and there’s other things that people will add to their overall cost when exhibiting.
Basically, what that boils down to is they had to stretch their budget. And a lot of agencies were maybe in past years, they booked a triple booth, and this year they booked a double booth, or in past years, they may have done three sponsorships, and this year they did two sponsorships. And hey, we get it.
We were just very grateful to have them there. I think the travelers were happy to see them. And I think at the end of the day, the important thing was to attend, to engage, to get out in front of the travelers, to have those meaningful conversations. And that’s really where you get your balancing act, because TravCon represents a unique opportunity to get in front of really the largest gathering of healthcare travelers in person anywhere. So if people were a little bit budget-challenged, we definitely appreciated that. But at the end of the day, being there is what counted and having that ability to connect with the traveler.
Oliver
Yeah, for me, I use these little anecdotal type of things to measure the pain in the market. We were right next to AMN, and the way I knew that it wasn’t going well is AMN was saying that they couldn’t go to Nobu this year. So they had to sub out Nobu for something a little bit more affordable and they were upset about that, but I hear you. It was not a Nobu year for us as agencies, right?
So that segues into some of the pain. I mean, and we know we talked about this market pain, but what, as you went around and talked to some of these agencies, what were some of the things you were hearing? What are the Joneses saying? What’s generally going on? And I can also jump in there too.
Steve
Yeah, well, certainly again, going back to the bill rates, bill rates are lower. I think the jobs have started to pick up and they started to pick up around the time of COVID, but certainly the beginning of this year, the first half of the year, there was a dip in jobs year over year. Agencies were feeling not only the pain of decreased bill rates, but they were also feeling the pain of fewer jobs and it being more competitive for jobs.
I think the other thing is, and this is kind of ironic because this is one of the benefits that attending TravCon provides, but certainly I would say the first half of the year, they were definitely challenged to find the right candidates. I think a lot of the travelers had gone back to staff for the reasons that you mentioned, probably temporarily, but nonetheless had gone back to staff jobs.
I think there was certainly a wave of retirement, too. After the pandemic, I think a lot of travelers had retired. The pain that I think they were feeling was fewer jobs, lower margins, and if they’re in the market for candidates, they’re having a tough time finding it or finding the candidates that they could place. So those were some of the factors I think that went into their exhibiting at TravCon and some of the pain that they brought with it.
But I think that going into TravCon, giving them the ability to engage directly with the travelers, hearing what the travelers have to say, get a better understanding of the travelers, that is really frankly part of the ROI that’s involved with TravCon. Because, again, you can’t find that any other place. You can send out all the email campaigns and do all the social campaigns that you wish, but it’s nothing like sitting across the table or having a beer with somebody across the table and having a discussion. I think it just pays dividends in that regard.
Oliver
Yeah, I mean, also if you think about it, right, like the travelers that pack up and go to Vegas to go to a travel nurse convention, they are what I refer to as the industry influencers, if you will. They are akin to social influencers. They are the tip of the spear, they’re the most industry advocate-centric candidates that we have. So to get in front of the tip of the spear, the 1% that travel across the country because they’re that into it, they’re the ones who are going to promote the industry. They’re the ones who are going to promote agencies.
To me, TravCon is definitely value with connecting with travelers and getting leads and converting. But to me, it’s a branding element, really. We were in a previous webinar talking about building a brand. To be able to get some brand evangelists that are the top 1% of the industry that are at this trade show to come and talk about you and go home and talk to other travelers and make recommendations on social, not to say that’s the whole thing but that is definitely a big part of it.
And, I think the ROI conversation as it pertains to trade shows in general, I think is misaligned. I mean, you’re never going to get a better ROI from a trade show than you would, for example, a platform, or a job posting or a Google click or whatever, but that’s not measured the same way. It’s not the same thing. One is very brand building, very brand-centric, and it pays a lot more dividends long term for that brand identity and sentiment. And I think as marketers, we have to value it different ways.
Steve
Yeah, I agree with most of what you said. Couple of points where I’ll give it a little bit of a different perspective but when you go to TravCon, there’s certainly a branding element. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. And to your point with the attendees that we have, we have a tremendous mix. There are people, when people register for TravCon as attendees, they indicate how many other TravCons they’ve gone to. And we have a very significant percentage of people that have gone to multiple TravCons over a sixteen-year period. So those are really, to your point, the evangelists, the ambassadors, right, people that have been doing this for a long time. It’s great to have your agency connect and engage those folks.
We also, on the other end of the spectrum, have a bunch of newbies, people that are brand new to the industry. We have our Traveler Success Bootcamp, specifically for newbies. We have a couple hundred people attend that. So there’s really a wide mix of people that are there, which is great for an agency to be exposed to. Not only do you get that visibility, that branding and so forth, but out of all those folks there, as you know, it’s a tremendous lead-generation event with over a thousand travelers attending this year.
For the lead generation components to each agency’s exhibit, the scanners that they use and so forth, most agencies can expect to walk away with the lion’s share of that thousand or so people attending. So when you have the opportunity to capture that many traveler contact information leads, if you will, directly, and bring those into your database, there’s definitely an aspect of real-time ROI that you can get.
Now, that’s not to say that you’re going to place somebody tomorrow, although it’s happened, but over a period of time, 60, 90 days and so forth, you can expect to place multiple travelers during that time period. So it’s an interesting mix of, as we like to say, the long game and the branding and the visibility and all that. But also, too, I just don’t want to discount the aspect of lead generation in that particular context. I don’t want to break TravCon down into a pure lead generation forum, but nonetheless, there is a significant lead generation part to it.
Oliver
Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, I didn’t mean to say that it’s not. I guess for me personally, it’s more for more branding, but I mean, you’re right. I mean, they are completely engaged and it’s a good point, you bring up, looking at these candidates long-term versus short-term transactional, right?
You alluded to this earlier, Steve, about sometimes there’s this appetite on the agency partner side about, well, we got this candidate and it’s been 30 days and we haven’t placed them or they’re not looking to go right now. And therefore, or even 90 days, right?
Like, and some of this is, they want this and we don’t have it. They want to go here and we don’t have it. They were applying for this job on this VMS and the job closed, we don’t have it. And they get immediately discounted. And I would imagine that that same mentality also affects people’s potential perception of ROI of TravCon, right? Like, we didn’t place them right away. But I think that’s the industry now.
And when we were like talking to some of our clients, it’s like three to six months for a placement now in general on average. And we have tons of clients that are placing within days or weeks as well. But that’s not typical. Not at scale. We have some clients that they’re making a decent amount of placements at the six-month to 12-month mark, mainly because they have to wait for an assignment to open up that they can connect somebody with, and they just don’t have the job supplier, they don’t have access to the VMS jobs, or they’re not promoting their VMS jobs because they need the margins.
I think this idea of like the short-term fix is really choking the industry. I know we all want to make placements right away, but to gear the shop up to only focus on this and exclude the rest – I think it’s a mistake. I always make metaphors. Look, we got to fill our fridge for today, we gotta eat tonight for dinner, but we need food in the fridge for tomorrow, too. We need to eat next week.
Steve
A hundred percent. I absolutely, again, I’ve been doing this for a long time, like yourself, and I have worked on the agency side as well. So I can absolutely positively sympathize with the agencies, particularly now in terms of that sense of immediacy.
Staffing, no matter whether it’s healthcare staffing, light industrial, clerical, and I’ve been involved with a lot of different verticals in the past relative to staffing. It is a very immediate business. Always has been, always will be. So I definitely understand now more than ever the situation that the healthcare staffing agencies are in, in terms of placeable candidates right now and getting them in, getting them into a job.
But I think the other component is building that pipeline where somebody may not, you may not be able to place somebody today. You may not be able to place them next month. But at some point, if you’re consistent with your communications, if you are consistent with your engagement, and you have this longer-term vision, you will eventually be able to work with that candidate. But it’s about the old sales component, that pipeline, continuing to fill that pipeline, continuing to communicate and connect with that pipeline of travelers so that when the time comes, you are going to be able to place that particular person.
Oliver
Yeah, and I think like right now, as an industry, we’re, I mean, to say we’re at an inflection point is probably a little late to the game, but I feel like we’re at another inflection point, and I’ll tell you why. We were looking at some data a couple of weeks ago, I was just digging around, nerding out on some things.
I mixed the data of job supply, for example, how many jobs are available in the travel nurse market over the last six months, which would, to me, signify the demand on behalf of the facilities, right? Like how many travelers we need. And I juxtaposed that against the data, which I took from Google for search traffic for travelers looking for traveler-specific jobs, and it was like this. So you have the hospitals opening up job supplies, the VMS is opening up job supplies, and at the same time, you have the travelers who are seeking for terms that are related to finding a travel nurse job, dramatically declining. And I think this is interesting.
So short term, it’s going to provide scarcity, right? So I think what I’m saying here is as we move into, and some of this is seasonality, right? As we come into the holiday, nobody wants to really work. December is always a crapshoot of a month for recruiting. It’s really hard. It’s really about getting a good January ready to go more than a great December. But a lot of these we’re seeing, but this is not a three-month regional trend. We’re seeing it over the last six months.
I then took the search data for people looking for permanent nursing positions and laid that on top. And it was straight up over the last several months. So I think we’re getting a lot of travelers, to your point from earlier, that are either leaving the, not necessarily the nursing profession, but they’re leaving the travel nurse industry in terms of more stability. The pay is almost parity. The benefits are a little bit better. What this is going to do, what it would seem like, it’s going to shrink the labor pool, in the short term, for the travel nurse industry. And I think we’re all seeing that right now.
It’s hard to get these travelers to travel. They’re just not biting. There’s less interest, there’s more passive, there’s more window shopping, yada yada yada. So what I’m really hopeful, and I think we’re starting to see this from some of the agencies we’re talking to, is that as we’re starting to see VMS jobs that are sitting for a little bit longer that aren’t filling as quickly as they were like right up during COVID or right after COVID. What I’m hopeful that that does is put pressure on bill rates, put pressure on pay rates, so that we can start to raise these pay rates to start to attract travelers back out of perm, back into the travel or new travelers into the mix. And really make this, but I think we’re a good several months out from that or at least six months out from that.
And we just had an election, we’ll see if that has anything to do with it. But I think for the next few months, scarcity is going to be the word. I think we have to fire on all four cylinders here. I mean, do you agree?
Steve
Yeah, there’s absolutely, as I mentioned, a component of travelers that went back to staff. I think there’s a component of travelers, again, they have retired. That’s it. They’re off the market and won’t be coming back. So, I think there is this aspect of a compressed candidate pool, some of whom were waiting on the sidelines. And again, we heard this a lot at TravCon. Some of whom were waiting on the sidelines to see what happens.
I do want to make a point, too. We talked a lot about travel nurses, but I know that you pay attention to the allied market, as do we. There is definitely a renewed or increasing need for allied travelers. Obviously, there’s always been a need for PTs and OTs, but you’re seeing a lot in the imaging area and the tech area, seeing a lot of traffic around that. So I think, in some ways, it represents opportunities for some of these agencies to, whereas travel nursing has had a bumpy road, to build out their allied component.
The challenge there is those candidates are also very difficult to find. But if you can find them and you can have a successful allied component to your agency, I think it really helps you to diversify. TravCon is an example. People think of it as a nursing-only event. 20% of the attendees this year were in the allied disciplines, and that’s been growing every year. So I think that’s, as we talk about travel, that’s another whole different component to this discussion.
Oliver
Yeah, and that’s interesting. We’ve seen some agencies that have really expanded diversification within the agency, whether it be the allied or therapy or rehab markets, whether that be per diem, whether that be even light industrial or professional, like they’ve had to redeploy their resources to make the rent, if you will. But it’s interesting, too.
I was surprised how many allied providers there were at TravCon so I want to hit on that point. There were so many allied providers and imaging and therapists and things like that at TravCon, more than I thought there were going to be. So if that’s an area of interest for you guys for next year, and the perception is that TravCon is mainly nursing. I was surprised how big that population was. And that was really great to see.
What I will say is that agencies that have moved over to allied and therapy, I will say there’s like a little bit of a ramp-up period. It is not as easy as taking a nurse recruiter over into the allied and therapy side and having him at it. Each individual like imaging specialty or each individual allied specialty has its own nuance, its own requirements, its own flow. It is super, super – it is difficult to kind of get up and running. It’s not as easy as just plugging in that nursing recruiter there. And then as you guys all know, and I think a lot of people get into it thinking it’s just going to be an easy win because there’s more demand there. And it really isn’t. I don’t know.
Steve
I agree with you 100%. We deal with a lot of firms on The Gypsy Nurse as well as TravCon that have both nursing divisions and allied divisions. I think it’s a tough time right now for an agency to build out an allied component if they don’t already have one. But I think if they do have one, I’ve heard of a lot of firms that are starting to put a little bit more support behind their allied component because they see that as a big growth area.
Again, it certainly has been for TravCon. I think when I got involved, we were in single digits for allied attendance, and this year, we’re at 20%. I expect it to grow even more next year. We’ve made a conscious effort at TravCon for those that have attended – the educational components, we’re increasing our educational tracks, our breakout sessions, our speakers, really starting to bring to the forefront the allied community. But there are a lot of, as you said, nuances. You’re looking at PTs or OTs versus techs versus imaging. A whole different set of components there, but we’re really giving it our best effort to grow out that part of the attendees for the coming years.
Oliver
Yeah, absolutely. And even people getting into the locum space as well, which you want to talk about hard. But anyway, yeah, so. And I know we’re coming up toward the end of the webinar here time-wise, and I want to provide some time for people to put in some questions. If you have any questions about TravCon or the industry or anything you want to put in the chat, guys, if you go ahead and throw that into the chat or the questions, we’ll go here a little bit and we’ll come back to hit them. Steve, do you have the date for next year yet?
Steve
I do. It is September 21st through the 24th, 2025. It’’ll be here before you know it. At the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a wonderful venue. We have been there for a number of years. A lot of people ask, well, why Vegas?
Oliver
Oh, keep it in Vegas.
Steve
Well, there are certainly a lot of attractive places in the U.S. to hold a conference. A couple of things about Vegas is, number one, from a venue perspective, the Paris Hotel is great. They’re well set up to accommodate this particular conference. It’s fairly easy to get to in terms of different flights and so forth. The hotels there are a lot less expensive than you will find in other areas of the country. The other thing is there’s a lot to do. So, obviously, there are extracurricular activities when it comes to TravCon. A lot of folks like to go out and explore the city. There’s so much to do between entertainment and sports and so forth. It’s really a wonderful venue, so we’ll be back in Vegas again this year.
Oliver
You know what I really liked, Steve, was there was an exhibitor networking event where all the agencies got together. It was just the agencies. And we all had a fabulous time just getting some face time with each other and talking shop and getting to know each other. I’d love for more of that. That was a really, that was a really fun time. It was probably one of my favorite parts just because we got to see a lot of people.
Steve
Yeah, it’s great – you talk about TravCon bringing travelers together, making new friends or reconnecting with old friends and so forth or recruiter-to-traveler connections, but also, too, in what is a very very competitive industry, it’s great to see the agencies communicating with each other, people from different agencies and kind of the camaraderie they have.
While there’s a camaraderie with travelers, I think when you put down the competitive aspect at an event like TravCon, there’s also a camaraderie among agencies. At the end of the day, everybody wants to be successful, right? Sometimes it’s great to share information, compare notes, and in a perfect world, everyone is successful in this particular industry.
Oliver
Yeah. And I’m going to put my foot in my mouth here, Steve, but I’m assuming for any of the agencies on the webinar right now that say, hey, I want to get involved in this. I want to support this initiative. I want to get booked up for next year. I would assume there’s some sort of an early discount, right? Or some sort of an early pricing if they sign up earlier than later, right?
Steve
Well, we did introduce some early pricing at the conference itself that if you booked during the the time that the conference was going on, you get a very substantial discount. That discount period has ended; however, our sales folks, depending on what people are looking to do, sometimes we can make accommodations relative to packages that they’re buying and so forth so I would encourage anybody that’s interested to reach out to us. Just go to the TravCon site. You can see the exhibitor registration there and somebody will be in touch and happy to have conversations about 2025.
Oliver
Great. I appreciate everyone jumping on the call. Steve, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. And last, like I said, we’ve been at the original TravCon. We are big fans of it. We’re happy to support the event. I was looking at the polls. 60% of the agencies here on the call were not at TravCon so guys, I know money is tight. I know it’s tough. But I can’t recommend it enough. It was a very, very good event. I think you should at least go to one, try it out. I haven’t heard anybody speak negatively about it. And like I said, we had a fantastic time, and the agencies we talked to were, as well. Any questions, reach out to Steve. The TravCon link is on the chat there on the right. And again, thanks for taking time out of your day to learn a little bit about the event and get some feedback from there. We wish everybody a happy week and great rest of the day. Thank you so much!
Steve
Thank you! Thanks, Oliver! Great to see you.
Oliver
Good to see you. Bye.
Leave a Reply