Cruise Planners Home Office Welcomes Advisors for First-Ever Tech Days
Cruise Planners travel advisors get plugged into all things technology at the first-ever “Tech Days” hosted at Cruise Planners new Home Office in Florida
For the first time ever, Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative, hosted a two-day workshop dedicated to technology and focused on new website coaching, mobile productivity, interactive Q&A’s as well as the brand’s signature “Cruisitude labs” where advisors get one-on-one tech advice. This on the heels of Cruise Planners releasing all new websites for its travel advisors with three different yet distinct design options: Land, Luxury and Contemporary. Along with the modern designs came new features, enhanced productivity, and updates to the program dashboard. Cruise Planners invited its travel advisors to its new Home Office to provide a hands-on experience and fully immerse the franchisee family in their new websites.
“Offering our advisors training on their re-designed websites is one of the many ways we provide continuous support to each franchisee through their travel agency business journey,” says Michelle Fee, Cruise Planners CEO and founder. “We teach our franchise owners how to be successful and technology is an important part of that. Ensuring they get the best technology training and products within the industry is what comes with being a part of the Cruise Planners travel advisor network.”
Tech Days exclusively offers the franchise owners opportunity to engage, ask questions and in turn learn about how to best leverage technology within Cruise Planners and beyond.
Re-designed Travel Advisor Website Training
Cruise Planners kicked off with the new website overview. CIO Brian Shultz highlighted the customizable website designs allowing Cruise Planners advisors the ability to focus on their chosen types of travel they wish to promote to their clients. Advisors have three website theme options: Land, Luxury and Cruise. All three options allow advisors customizable features throughout the site. The websites are designed to be modern, more responsive and faster.
“What I love the most is that my clients can go into MyTrips and they can favorite the cruises that they are interested in, and I actually get an email about the cruises they liked,” said Adriana Matos, Cruise Planners franchise owner. “It was really interesting the past few days, right after the re-designed websites launched, one of my clients was logged into her profile favoriting all the vacations she liked and a few days later ended up booking one of those cruises—that I think was pretty awesome. CP Technology is the foundation of our business. In order to run a home-based business, automation is paramount and having that website is very important.”
Technology Workshops & Data Protection
Running a home-based business online requires data protection. The Home Office tech team gave travel advisors the rundown on how to manage their business safely and securely. With Cruise Planners technology and guidance, advisors are equipped with the tools and knowledge necessary to protect their business data from all sides.
“Managing passwords and data encryption is especially vital nowadays, it’s important we make franchisees aware of resources provided with the support from our team. We are here to make sure their travel franchise is running securely and efficiently,” said Shultz.
Tech Days included various workshops. One specifically focused on Microsoft Outlook’s full range of features. The technology team presented an overview of useful practices and tools within Outlook to run their business efficiently. Cruise Planners Franchise Owners, Allan Conoval and his wife Linda made the trip down from New York to attend CP Tech Days.
“We picked up on a lot of good pointers on how to better improve our skills on the IT aspect of Cruise Planners,” said Conoval. “My chosen website theme now exudes luxury, which is exactly the clientele we cater to. Our clients have told us that the site is attractive and classy, and we agree it works well for our business.”
Additional workshops available to agents throughout Tech Days included:
- Mobile Productivity
- SEO Training
- Ask MAXX
- Cruisitude® Labs
