Cruise Planners Proclaims “It’s Never Enough,” on its Mission to Remain the Best Home-Based Travel Agency

Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative, announced technology enhancements and new launches designed to further accelerate Cruise Planners’ franchise owners’ travel sales at the company’s annual Convention. This year’s Convention kicked off the celebration of its 25 years of success and the leadership team reflected on how far Cruise Planners had come, from the time when it began with just 5 agents to today as the nation’s largest home-based travel franchise. 

“Cruise Planners agents travel the world, so they need to be able to run their business from anywhere which is why we continue to invest so heavily in providing them with the best technology,” Brian Shultz, CIO of Cruise Planners. “We always put our travel advisors first, so we create tools to help them run their businesses better and we know by doing this, it strengthens their connection with their clients from both a personal and digital standpoint.”

In front of 600 travel advisors, Michelle Fee, CEO; Vicky Garcia, COO; and Brian Shultz, CIO, reviewed enhancements to CP Maxx, Cruise Planners’ proprietary CRM and booking system launched last year, as well as several new tools.

“Cruise Planners without a doubt delivered “The Greatest Show” by showcasing tools with new and enhanced features to help drive travel advisor success in everything cruise and land travel,” Shultz said. 

The newest tech launches and enhancements of many Cruise Planners applications include:

New, Stunning Consumer Websites – These mobile-responsive websites are in the design phase and will be launched in 2019. These will give agents the ability to have up to three different types of consumer-facing sites – contemporary, luxury and land travel – to satisfy all client types and agent niches. 

Mobile App Enhancements – Cruise Planners continues to be the only home-based travel franchise to offer multiple mobile apps, both of which have been updated to improve usability.

• CP Mobile allows consumers to manage their trips while traveling, book future trips and connect with their travel advisor.
• CP Maxx, a mobile app for Cruise Planners travel advisors, will be relaunching in early 2019 to help them manage their business from the palm of their hand.

Driving Leads to Advisors at No Cost – Cruise Planners will be refreshing its corporate website with enhanced smart forms and data capture with the goal of driving more leads directly to its travel agents. Agents immediately receive an email notification and the client information is automatically added to the travel advisor’s client database.  

Alexa Skills Now with Alexa Show Capabilities – After being the first in the industry to launch two Alexa skills last year, Cruise Planners continues to innovate with the visual version of the popular voice-activated technology, Alexa Show. This makes it even easier for agents to manage their business with an enhanced virtual personal assistant.

Flight Tools Built in to CP Maxx – Cruise Planners agents can easily manage and full-service statuses through Cruise Planners’ partnerships with GMT, a top-rated air consolidator. The Find a Flight tool allows agents to easily compare rates for all classes of service and agents can mark up the rates when there is a substantial pricing advantage – another way to earn increased commissions for Cruise Planners advisors.  Another integration for flights is the Flight Look-Up Tool, allowing agents to easily look up and log flight details for clients who may have purchased their own flights – a big time-saving for Cruise Planners agents.

Group Price Advantage – This new feature within CP Maxx quickly alerts agents during the cruise search to identify a sailing where Cruise Planners has a Home Office Group Price Advantage. They can easily compare current published rates for specific categories with Home Office Groups Rates. They can also perform a search to only see sailings where there is a Group Pricing Advantage. 

CP Partner Resources with Vacation Wizard Technology – A new interactive supplier partner database. When travel advisors have close to 200 travel suppliers in their database, finding the right supplier for a customer can be difficult. The new Vacation Wizard, within CP Partner Resources, allows agents to easily find the right supplier based on certain criteria such as travel style, travel category, land or cruise or destination specific. The tool narrows down and shows the results and even allows for quick comparison on commission levels and other supplier information such as destinations that they provide in their portfolio.

“Cruise Planners travel advisors’ sales are up 20% since launching CP Maxx last year, and we know that with the technology enhancements just announced, we’ll continue this incredible sales growth in the future,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and Founder of Cruise Planners. “It’s Never Enough for Cruise Planners.”

To see more announcements from Cruise Planners’ annual Convention, please view the first release here.