Cruise Planners Unveils New Tech Tools, Marketing Initiatives

Cruise Planners: Land Vacation Sales on the Rise

<!— Travel Agent —>
Travel Agent

Cruise Planners CEO Raises Record Funds to Help Fight Ca…

<!— Travel Agent —>
Travel Agent

‘The Model Has Completely Evolved:’ One-On-One With Crui…

<!— Host Agency & Consortia —>
Host Agency Consortia

Expedia Adds Routehappy Flight Data for More Informed Bo…

<!— Travel Technology —>
Travel Technology

The Ultimate First-Timers’ Guide to Road Tripping

<!— Features & Advice —>
Michelle Bucher

PHOTO: Cruise Planners’ executive team debuted new products and services for their travel agent franchisees at the company’s annual conference at the Borgata in Atlantic City. Pictured from left to right are: Tom Kruszewski, CFO and co-owner; Vicky Garcia COO and co-owner; Michelle Fee, CEO and co-founder; and Brian Shultz, executive vice president, technology and operations.

The Big Green Machine is on a roll. Cruise Planners, the American Express travel representative, which long ago adopted “green” as its official company color, held its annual convention Nov. 12-15 at the Borgata casino resort in Atlantic City, N.J. Most of the 500 travel franchise owners in attendance showed their allegiance by wearing something green.

The Coral Springs, Fla.-headquartered group, the largest home-based travel agent franchise network, reported strong sales results and unveiled a number of initiatives in technology, marketing and training to help its more than 900 franchisees achieve even greater profits.

The event kicked off with Michelle Fee, Cruise Planners CEO and co-founder, vowing that her group will dominate the home-based travel agency market.

“Our goal is to have total domination of the home-based travel industry where Cruise Planners is only name your customer will know,” she told her franchisee delegates. Indeed, the convention’s theme was “In It to Win It,” demonstrating Cruise Planners’ commitment to its growing network of travel advisors.

Fee told delegates that Cruise Planners has spent the past year investing in its headquarters team and adding to staff so it can truly be an extension of its franchisees to help them grow their business. “We have invested internally in all aspects of the company so each of our travel advisors have the back-end support of a 65-person team focusing on marketing, technology, training and strategic development,” Fee said.

That investment and the programs developed by Cruise Planners seem to be paying off big time. Fee and her team unveiled new results that showed the average Cruise Planners franchisee grew their business by 26 percent based on departures in 2014. In addition, Cruise Planners is projecting a 44 percent increase in bookings for 2015 based on front-loaded revenues.

Even better, Cruise Planners reported increased revenues for 2014 in all industry segments. Cruise revenues, the company’s core category, are up 16.3 percent, land vacation revenues are up 38.9 percent; car, air and hotel revenues are up 32 percent; and travel insurance revenues are up 16.2 percent.

Cruise Planners also has been diversifying the sales mix that its franchisees produce. While those franchises still predominately sell cruises (71 percent), land is now at 20 percent, travel insurance is at 5 percent, and air, car and hotel are at 5 percent, according to the company’s latest figures for 2014.

Cruise Planners also has been beefing up its technology, training and marketing programs to boost sales in all categories of travel. “We have been building the technology and beefing up our in-house support so each CP travel advisor can efficiently work on growing their business and focus on selling,” Fee said. “We do all the heavy lifting in the background in an effort to support each franchise.”

Here’s a rundown of some of those technology, marketing and support programs unveiled at this year’s conference:

New Associates Program: Cruise Planners is now focusing on beefing up its associates program for franchisees. Associates are effectively independent contractors affiliated directly with a Cruise Planners franchisee. The company found that those franchisees with associates had three times the revenue as those running their business alone. Those who added associates increased revenues by 27 percent.

The new Cruise Planners associates program, launching Jan. 1, will allow associates to participate in the company’s marketing campaigns and provide them with access to more tools to help drive sales. Also, Cruise Planners introduced a sliding scale whereby a franchisee can add more associates as it grows its sales.

Better Mobile Technology: As just one of 87 improvements made by its growing in-house IT staff, Cruise Planners has launched Mobile 2.0 for its Cruise Planners app, which can be used by customers of franchisees to book cruises and communicate with their Cruise Planners agents.

With the revamped app, which is currently live, Cruise Planners can push out notifications and sales promotions with strong calls to action. The app also allows customers to load up photo albums of their trips that they can post on social media outlets. Cruise Planners was the first travel agency franchise organization to introduce a mobile app.

Better Search Engine Optimization: Since this summer Cruise Planners has focused on improving search engine optimization for the individual websites of its franchises. According to the company, that has already resulted in a 113 percent increase in website traffic. Cruise Planners has plans to continue to expand the program to help drive more consumer traffic to each franchisee’s website.

New Smart Select Tool: Smart Select allows travel advisors to automatically identify clients within their databases for specific targeted marketing campaigns that will maximize efficiency and make the best use of each advisor’s marketing dollars. Cruise Planners home office will now automatically segment those customers based on purchasing habits, demographics and other factors. Since launching Smart Select in June, Cruise Planners has seen the program increase sales by double-digits.

Improved Franchisee Websites: Cruise Planners already manages thousands of pages of web content for each of its franchisees’ websites. New improved websites will now allow customers to search for both land and cruise vacations from one spot. They also will offer better displays of current deals offered by Cruise Planners franchisees, a better search box, and new “buttons” dedicated to land vacations and tickets and events. In addition, each advisor’s contact information will be consistently displayed on every web page. Finally, as of Dec. 1 each site will feature a new, customizable “CP Brochure Rack” with digital versions of preferred supplier brochures that customers download on their own or franchisees can download and send out.

New Client Management Tool: Cruise Planners also introduced CP Hub, a client prospecting management tool that helps franchisees better qualify clients, price products, follow-up with clients and book their customers. The new tool, part of Cruise Planners existing eRez reservations system, is focused on helping franchisees stay on top of their customer prospects by sending email reminders about all sales opportunities. The tool, which is currently live, also helps them better track, monitor, forecast and manage sales and prospective sales.

New Hotel Reservations System: A new hotel reservations system powered by Orbitz is being added to Cruise Planners’ eConnect booking platform effective Dec. 1. Commissions earned on these hotel sales will be sent directly to Cruise Planners’ home office, which will then distribute them to franchisees. Previously Cruise Planners franchisees had access to the Orbitz hotels through American Express, but the new system will allow Cruise Planners to expedite commissions, which are 10 percent on each booking. Franchisees can search for hotels by date, destination, room type and other parameters. They can also get extensive information on each property.

New Triggered Email Program: Under this new program, set to launch Dec. 1, when a Cruise Planners customer books a trip, they get a series of up to eight emails designed as automatic touch points throughout the booking cycle. The idea is that clients receive personalized attention from their travel advisor automatically at each stage of the booking process. For example, once a customer books a trip they receive a thank you email with personalized note from their travel advisor.

Within six months of the cruise, for instance, they get a “touching base” email with trip details, possible pre- and post- tours, hotel options, etc. They also get a final payment notification that they can click on to make the payment directly through a secure email link. They also get an email prompting them to check-in for their cruise. Finally, they get a welcome home email after the trip is over.

New Regional Structure: Cruise Planners this year introduced a new regional structure to its sales and marketing team, adding new business development staffers and new business coaches to work with its franchisees. In 2014, i5 began a series of eight regional meetings across the country, as well as two boot camps with intensive sales, marketing and product training. Those regional meetings and boot camps will continue in 2015.

New Social Media Training: Cruise Planners has turned to an expert, Sophie Bujold, a social media expert who knows travel, to develop a new training program starting in January. The quarterly program will help coach franchisees to better use social media in their marketing and client acquisition.

“All of our proprietary technology tools are designed to help Cruise Planners travel advisors work smarter, not harder,” said Vicky Garcia, chief operating officer and co-owner of Cruise Planners. “We design our user interface with all generations in mind—from millennials to baby-boomers—and our websites, mobile app and online tools for consumers and advisors are always evolving.”

Since Cruise Planners creates all of its technology in house, the company has developed programs not only for the advisors, but also for the home office team. For example, the regional business development coaches are able to see a “Franchise Snapshot” and view sales statistics, training module status, login behavior and more for each franchisee to better assist with strategic one-on-one business coaching.

“We have invested a lot into our technology, and it is truly paying off,” Garcia said. “Our tools are like a good ‘Big Brother’ focused on helping each of our franchisees be a successful small business owner.”