Cruise Planners Wins Gold

Virtual Consumer Event Series and new Task Manager tool earn Cruise Planners two Gold Magellan Awards from Travel Weekly

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Cruise Planners Franchising, LLC

Oct 26, 2021, 16:25 ET

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., Oct. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cruise Planners was honored by Travel Weekly with two gold Magellan Awards in the Travel Agent Innovation and Virtual Experiences/Events categories. Travel Weekly's Magellan Awards honors the best in travel and salutes the outstanding travel professionals who play an integral role behind the scenes.

Cruise Planners^® Task Manager
Innovation at Cruise Planners has removed the need for pen and paper, post-It notes and excel spreadsheets with the recently launched CP Maxx Task Manager. This tool allows advisors to create tasks, checklists, and reminders from anywhere within the CP Maxx booking tool and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Advisors can get reminder alerts, see a list of tasks in date order, filter by type of task and even assign a task to another advisor within their agency. "We design tools for travel advisors to help drive efficiency, giving them more time to sell and be successful," said CEO and founder, Michelle Fee. Completely free for franchise owners and associates, the true power of this system is in providing responsive communication and superior service to their clients. The Task Manager has been embraced by Cruise Planners^® Travel Advisors, with more than 125,000 tasks set up by advisors since its launch in May 2021. "Even during COVID, our focus has remained on setting Cruise Planners travel advisors up to be in the best position moving forward," Fee said. "This is one of the many tools that ensures that our advisors are set up for success."

Cruise Planners^® Where2Next, Virtual Travel Series
During the pandemic, Cruise Planners needed to shift its traditional marketing strategy and create a new way to keep travel – and their trusted travel advisors – top of mind with clients. The Where2Next™ Virtual Travel Series launched in August 2020 to educate consumers on what's happening in the world of travel such as the return of cruising, hot destinations, and river cruising and more. Completely automated for the advisor network, these Zoom events are also hosted by Cruise Planners executives along with executives from leading travel suppliers, provide exclusive offers and allow a way for travel advisors to showcase the power of the Cruise Planners brand and superior reputation in the industry.

"Our virtual travel event series is a way to introduce new destinations or types of travel to our advisors' clients," Fee said. "We can provide this program to our advisors which is not only free to them but completely organized by our home office team. Our marketing and technology automation does all the work including sending the invitations, posting a web banner and registration page on their sites, sending event reminders, and even the follow up after the event with everything sent on behalf of the advisor to maintain that one-to-one relationship." The Cruise Planners home office team does everything from scheduling the event with travel suppliers, negotiating the special offers, and hosting the event. In 2020, the 5 events resulted in a stunning 3,644% increase in travel purchases over same booking period pre-pandemic in 2019. In 2021, the 10 events to date have resulted in over $20 million in purchases – during a pandemic.

About Cruise Planners
Cruise Planners, the nation's largest home-based travel advisor franchise network and an American Express Travel Representative, has more than 2,500 franchise owners who independently book vacations and travel experiences for their clients. Headquartered in Coral Springs, Fla. since 1994, Cruise Planners provides its travel advisors with access to award-winning, innovative marketing; cutting-edge mobile technology; dynamic, hands-on training; lead-generating tools, as well as professional coaching and development. Learn more at http://www.cruiseplannersfranchise.com

SOURCE Cruise Planners Franchising, LLC