Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative, Announced Record … – Virtual

The company’s sold-out event focused on how travel advisors can best market and sell to all generations using the franchise’s cutting-edge marketing and technology tools

Boca Raton, Fla. (PRWEB) November 24, 2015

Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative, the nation’s largest home-based travel agent franchise network in the travel industry, hosted more than 600 travel franchise owners to its sold-out annual convention at the Boca Raton Resort and Club, a Waldorf Astoria Resort. This year’s convention had a “ReGENerate” theme, designed to underscore how agents can more effectively attract new clients while retaining their existing customers – no matter which generation they belong to.

“We believe the future of travel is at the intersection of technology and marketing,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and co-founder of Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative. “We are seeing our travel agents embrace technology mo matter their generation – they are using tools to help manage their business and our mobile apps help clients experience travel.”

Cruise Planners takes the best practices in marketing and uses technology to help enhance those efforts and that winning combination has made them a technology leader. Since Cruise Planners creates all of its technology in house, the company has invested heavily in growing the Home Office Team and creating new tools to help agents grow their business, helping consumers have a more seamless travel experience and also assisting the Home Office Team become stronger coaches through business development strategies. This year, Cruise Planners announced the following tools at Convention:

• Mobile Technology: Cruise Planners Mobile has been updated with two mobile apps – one for consumers and one for travel advisors who can now run their business from the palm of their hand. With a few clicks on a smart device, CP agents can now book a trip, send an invoice and pull up client information – even without an Internet connection. And their clients can access personalized travel information, book shore excursions, purchase insurance and more all from their secure mobile app.
• Triggered Email Campaigns: One of the most well-received tools Cruise Planners has ever introduced is the Triggered Email Campaign, which truly is a marketing campaign that uses dynamic technology data to automatically push out a series of emails throughout the lifecycle of a consumer’s booking. This year, the company added a “Book Onboard” triggered email that uses the built-in logic based on the customer’s purchase history. More than 97 percent of Cruise Planners agents are using the tool and already 300,000 emails have been triggered through the campaign.
• 360-degree Marketing Campaigns: Cruise Planners constantly evolves its marketing programs and uses both traditional media combined with social media, email and online marketing to create 360-degree approaches to reach target audiences. Some recent enhancements include Smart Select, which allows travel advisors to automatically identify clients within their database based on predetermined data for a specific marketing campaign that will maximize efficiency and make the best use of each advisor’s marketing dollars based on consumer purchase habits. This enhancement has positively impacted sales by double-digits.
• Enhanced Completely Packaged Vacations: Cruise Planners knows the sweet spot is to offer something unique and offers customized vacation bundles so their agents are able to sell unique packages to help them stand out in the marketplace. This year, they introduced dynamic packaging through its relationship with preferred partners such as ARC Marketplace – allowing agents to create customized itineraries with additional tours, excursions and more.
• Trade Show Kit: Cruise Planners noticed a trend – that more travel agents are attending trade and consumer shows, so they rolled out the new CP branded Trade Show Kit. The kit features items to help make each agent look larger than life at various shows with branded items such as signs, a table cloth, personalized pens, sticky notes, bags, balloons and more. Being part of the Cruise Planners franchise allows the Home Office Team to design and order in bulk so agents can reap the benefits while focusing on selling.

“We have invested a lot into our in-house team, and it has continued to position Cruise Planners as a technology and marketing powerhouse for our agents benefit,” said Vicky Garcia COO and co-owner. “Our tools are created and designed specifically based on the challenges and opportunities faced by travel agents.”