Cruise Planners Remains in Top Spot as Best Travel Franchise to Own on Entrepreneur’s Annual Franchise 500 List

Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative, the nation’s largest home-based travel agency franchise network in the industry, continues to have a strong hold on best travel franchises to own. This is the fourteenth consecutive year that Cruise Planners has earned the spot on Entrepreneur’s Annual Franchise 500 List, making it one of the best franchises to own.

“We are always thinking up creative ideas for innovating and enhancing our marketing and technology since we know we have to constantly be on our A-game to maintain this position,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and co-founder of Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative. “This year our key focus has been on maximizing and building more innovative technology and marketing tools for the franchise owners and they love it.”

Cruise Planners is a franchise that offers financial strength and stability, has a great reputation in the travel industry and years of proven experience that make it a successful franchise. Since Cruise Planners’ main goal is to ensure its agents are the most successful travel agents in the industry, the company is constantly developing new tools designed for the agents to run their business seamlessly. Below are some of the new technology programs rolled out for franchise success, which helped secure the No. 1 ranking:    

• CP Insights: Cruise Planners believes in and has invested in solutions that incorporate economic, demographic and behavioral segments in data mining to target the right client at the right time with relevant promotions, sales and marketing pieces.
• CP View: Another new tool helps agents match sailings and itineraries with special audiences based on customer data, sales trends and consumer behavior. The goal is to serve up clients that would be ideal targets – with a few clicks in the Cruise Planners system; a marketing communication is created to generate new business.
• Automated Email Confirmations: Cruise Planners agents can simply email any reservation from hundreds of vendors and have the fields instantly input into the back-end business management system to help Cruise Planners travel agents get paid faster and with less manual entry.

"Cruise Planners will continually develop new tools, which allow our agents to stay ahead of the competition, so they can compete with the best of the best with confidence,” Fee said. “Our focus is to help our agents communicate with their customers with amazing turn-key marketing combined with world-class technology allowing them to compete with the big online agencies. Cruise Planners agents are high tech, yet high touch through our proprietary tools."