About The Avant-Guide Institute

Creating meaning for an elite roster of travel and consumer brands.

The Avant-Guide Institute (AGI) is an authority on consumer marketing, tourism and global cultural trends.

Founded in 1998 as a lifestyle brand and publisher of fashionable guides to the world's most important cities, our goal to be a curator of cool and an illuminator of things new and unique was advanced by developing a vast proprietary network of global trend hunters. Now numbering in the thousands, these passionate consumers continuously seek out new ideas, products and experiences around the globe.

Every day our in-boxes are flooded with discoveries of new products and services of all kinds, alerting us to the most novel and exciting consumer oriented ideas worldwide. The scope of these original offerings is both breathtaking and inspirational. Some of what we see is dumb or silly for sure, but much of what we discover fills us with excitement and a joyful pride in the limitlessness of the human imagination.

Corporate Trends Consulting

It wasn't long before we started "connecting the dots" and making associations between all the various cool things we saw popping up. Taken together, lots of similar offerings emerging at once reveal themselves as examples of broad social trends. Today, we examine global trends through the prism of travel, destinations, and consumer goods and services in order to assist a select roster of brands to develop products and services that best resonate with their clients' sensibilities.

Speaking Services

AGI furnishes dynamic presenters to a diverse range of international conferences, conventions and congresses, including World Travel Market (England), Promo Live! (USA), Tourism Futures (Australia), Mandarin Oriental Hotels (Worldwide), BrandMarker (Europe), Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (USA & Europe), International Luxury Travel Market (France), Jumeirah (Dubai), Canada's Tourism Leadership Summit (Canada), Canadian Gaming Summit (Canada), Indaba (South Africa), EIBTM (Spain), and many, many more.

Influence Marketing: Extreme Word of Mouth

As early adopters who enjoy sharing their discoveries with others, our trend hunters are natural influencers who are often at the hub of their own social networks. They include bloggers, academics, industry analysts and professional advisors, all of whom have outsized power to persuade and inspire others. Today, in addition to our trend hunters sending fresh things our way, we now send them our clients' latest offerings in order to build awareness, increase sales, and field test products, ideas and initiatives.

As a company, our goal is to continue to service a select roster of big-thinking clients, helping them reach their goals in terms of sales, marketing and growth.