Cruise Planners Kicks Off 2022 Convention with Exciting Announcements
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. Nov.12- There’s no place quite like home, and in the case of Cruise Planners, their 2022 annual convention is finally back in South Florida after hosting its previous one in Riviera Maya, Mexico. The convention, taking place Nov. 11-14 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, will host over 700 travel advisors from across the country and include supplier executives from all major cruise lines, tour companies and all-inclusive resorts. Cruise Planners unveiled the theme of their convention, “CP World” at their executive opening session and also made a series of big announcements including financial performance, new proprietary tools and technology, upcoming events and marketing initiatives.
Cruise Planners executives shared a financial overview showing incredible recovery post covid. Land travel, which includes all-inclusive resorts, guided and packaged tours–also continued to be a standout with an 18% increase over 2019. River cruising was also on the rise, with a 21% increase in departures, making it the biggest year ever in this niche market. Overall, Cruise Planners has seen a 28% growth in 2022 compared to 2019, which is welcome news after the past two years of travel being at a relative standstill.
“It’s been a stellar year of growth for Cruise Planners and the energy at convention is electric and palpable,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and founder of Cruise Planners. “You never leave without feeling rejuvenated and empowered and we’re thrilled to share all the innovations we’ve been working on and to celebrate the milestones and hard work of our advisors and Home Office Team.”
Cruise Planners also unveiled new technology tools and applications, including LivePlanner, the first of its kind in the industry and is patent-pending. Announcements include:
Branded Landing Pages with Destination Pages, Supplier Pages, and more Destination Microsites
Another enhancement to the agent’s websites will beautiful imagery and detailed information about popular destinations to help inspire travel
Destination Hub
This new addition to CP Maxx (Cruise Planners proprietary CRM system) will allow agents to have destination information at the click of a button. It is being powered by Fodors, the leading destination content provider.
Amenity Tracker
The Amenity Tracker is a tool within CP Maxx that will allow advisors to keep track of all of those perks, amenities and gifts that their clients receive for booking with them. It will allow advisors to easily record the amenities offered such as Onboard Credits, Beverage Packages, Prepaid Gratuities, Resort Credits and more!
Chat feature for our CARE Support Team
Cruise Planners has a support team called the CARE Team. This will give advisors the ability to receive prompt assistance and top service care!
Navitrip Hotel Booking Engine
Giving access to over 100,000 hotels and resorts from all over the world, our new Find a Hotel tool powered by Navitrip, and will allow advisors to adjust their commission and savings for their clients by using a simply toggle bar. It allows them to have complete control.
Trip Summary 2.0
Trip Summary 2.0 is a major enhancement to our current Trip Summary tool. It is completely integrated within CP Maxx and therefore an advisor can easily create a Trip Summary for their clients with a few clicks of button that includes images, itinerary details and special notes and recommendations.
LivePlanner
LivePlanner is a “first-of-its-kind” tool. It is a live vacation planning and presenting tool. It allows advisors to have a real-time, live consultation session with their clients. Unlike Zoom or other screen sharing tools, LivePlanner gives full control to the advisor to push the content to their client’s screens to show them only what they want to show them.
LivePlanner Collections
LivePlanner Collections will feature destinations, brands or specific ships, resorts or tours. Each collection will be designed together with the supplier partners to make it easy to show your customers exactly what they’re looking for.
LivePlanner & Trip Summary
By combining LivePlanner and Trip Summary, advisors can build a day-by-day sample itinerary for their clients and then utilize LivePlanner to review the itinerary with them and easily provide content and details to help the client visualize the experience proposed.
2023 In-Person Events (16 Total):
- 2 Elite Summits
- 3 Tech Days
- 5 Boot Camps
- 3 Sales Academies
- Land Forum
- Luxury Forum
- Annual Convention
CP Cares and Charitable Giving
As part of the CP Cares tradition of giving back each year at convention, Cruise Planners partnered with the Miami VA Fisher House to raise funds and collect donation items. The Fisher House Foundation builds comfort homes where military & veteran families can stay free of charge, while a loved one is in the hospital. Cruise Planners advisors ad suppliers made donations that included gift cards, household items, kitchen supplies and other non-perishable goods and Cruise Planners will present a check of $10,000 as well. To date, CP Cares has raised over $2 million dollars for charitable causes.
In addition, Cruise Planners honored veterans at their opening session and also dedicated the convention to Vicky Garcia, the company’s late COO and co-owner, who passed away earlier this year after a long illness.
The convention continues with the advisors onboard the Norwegian Primafrom Nov.14-17 for the inaugural sailing and cruise portion of their convention.
Company Background:
Cruise Planners was founded in 1994 and is the nation’s largest home-based travel agent franchise network. As a leader in the travel franchise industry, Cruise Planners positions a nation-wide network of 2,500 franchise owners for success by providing innovative marketing programs, proprietary and cutting-edge booking and technology tools, as well as professional development and travel agent training with the industry’s top executives. The company continues to be an industry leader and was named the No.1 travel franchise by Entrepreneur magazine for 18 consecutive years and awarded by Franchise Business Review as “Best-In-Category” for 2 years.
Franchise Business Review also ranked Cruise Planners #3 OVERALL on their list of Top 200 Franchises of 2022. Cruise Planners was recently featured in Entrepreneur as one of the top 30 franchise innovators in technology, has been consistently named as one of the Top Women-Owned Businesses by the South Florida Business Journal, is on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America, and was recognized as one of the Top Workplaces by the Sun Sentinel.
Visit our website, www.cruiseplanners.com, for more information or to view the complete list of awards and honors. For those interested in becoming a franchise owner, please visit https://www.cruiseplannersfranchise.com/.