The agency has appointed two executives across marketing and growth, linking its luxury travel ambitions to changing ways travellers find and assess specialist advice.
Pavlus Travel & Cruise announced two senior leadership appointments on June 9, 2026, naming Erik De La Cruz vice president of marketing and promoting Michael Steudle to the newly created role of chief luxury growth officer. The Albuquerque-based agency said the moves are intended to support its growth in luxury travel and its leadership in an era shaped by artificial intelligence. Pavlus described the appointments as an effort to reinforce both its commercial capabilities and the way prospective travellers discover and trust an agency.
The appointments place marketing, technology and luxury client acquisition at the centre of the agency’s next phase. De La Cruz joins after 16 years at Viking, where he most recently served as senior director of sales, and brings more than two decades of travel-industry experience, according to the release. His background includes luxury cruise sales, strategic partnerships and support for the travel-adviser community, areas that connect supplier relationships with the specialist guidance expected from a high-end travel agency.
Steudle has spent 15 years at Pavlus, most recently as vice president of marketing and information technology. The company said he led its digital transformation and developed its artificial-intelligence search-visibility strategy before moving into the new position. As chief luxury growth officer, he will bring together the agency’s technology, luxury client acquisition and long-term growth strategy. Both executives report to Shelby Steudle, president of Pavlus Travel & Cruise, and both appointments took effect immediately, the company said.
The leadership changes reflect a narrow but important shift in how travel agencies compete for attention: expertise increasingly has to be discoverable through digital systems as well as communicated through personal service. That interpretation is grounded in Pavlus’s description of Steudle’s remit and in founder and chief executive Craig Pavlus’s view that the two executives combine knowledge of luxury cruising with technology expertise. The release does not quantify the agency’s artificial-intelligence investment or set out specific performance targets, leaving the appointments themselves as the clearest signal of direction.
Pavlus Travel & Cruise was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company says it represents Viking, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Tauck and more than 90 other luxury cruise and tour partners, while charging no service fees; it also identifies itself as the Number 1 Tauck seller worldwide for more than 20 consecutive years. Against that established supplier network, the addition of De La Cruz and Steudle gives the agency distinct senior ownership of marketing and technology-led growth, while preserving the human expertise that remains central to its stated positioning.
