Cruise Planners Announces New Marketing Initiatives

November 4, 2024

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., Oct. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Cruise Planners, the nation’s largest home-based travel agency franchise network, introduced a series of innovative marketing initiatives at its annual convention, designed to spark fresh travel inspiration.

These initiatives highlight Cruise Planners’ commitment to delivering industry leading marketing programs that empower advisors to achieve new levels of success. Targeted, personalized and automated marketing allows advisors to focus on their primary strengths—selling travel and providing exceptional client experiences.

Cruise Planners Executive Team: Chief Strategy Officer, Scott Koepf, Chief Operations Officer, Theresa Scalzitti, Founder and CEO, Michelle Fee, and Chief Information Officer, Brian Shultz.

The Cruise Planners in-house design and marketing team publishes over 30 direct mail pieces each year with distribution to clients on behalf of their advisors. Paired with multi-channel, digital campaigns, these award-winning, turnkey marketing solutions are the best in the industry and help advisors stay top of mind with their clients.

New marketing tools and programs include:

Retargeting Marketing Campaigns:
Leveraging customer behavior and intelligence tools, Cruise Planners will deliver marketing campaigns tailored to clients’ specific travel interests, budget and life stage, ensuring personalized and timely engagement to boost the chances of making a sale.

River & Expedition Guide:
Launching in Q1 2025, the new River & Expedition Guide brochure will provide a comprehensive resource for clients interested in river or expedition cruising. It includes details on popular ports, must-see natural wonders, landmarks, cultural sites, and key differences between cruise lines. This guide will be available in print and digital, expanding the potential reach.

Where2Next Consumer Series:
The award-winning Where2Next consumer series enters its sixth year, spotlighting trending destinations like Alaska, Europe, Hawaii, Australia/New Zealand, Japan, and the South Pacific. Each campaign features an exclusive offer available only through Cruise Planners travel advisors and is marketed for their advisors through email, social media, and advisors’ websites.

CP Social Enhancements:
The CP Social program, an award-winning social media platform, now offers AI-powered tools that automatically create post suggestions, review responses, and aids advisors in optimizing their local search presence.

Other new tools unveiled at Cruise Planners Convention:

Cruisetours:
Advisors can now access Cruisetour information directly within CP Maxx for select sailings. Searches provide detailed tour data, including name, code, length, and dates. This will allow advisors to better offer enhanced experiences to their clients sailing to Alaska or Europe.

Trip Summary Enhancements:
Enhancements to the existing Trip Summary tool include new filters, easier bundling of multiple trip summaries, trip proposals and a better interface to improve the user experience enabling advisors to provide professional, robust trip summaries to their clients leading to higher sales close rate.

Hotel Sheets:
Advisors can select specific rooms and rates from over 2 million properties worldwide and share them with clients, with dynamic live pricing ensuring the most up-to-date information.

Navitrip Hotel Comparisons with Live Booking:
Hotel Comparison sheets allow clients to view multiple hotel options. New for 2025, clients can now book their preferred hotel directly through the Hotel Comparison tool.

“At Cruise Planners, we’re constantly innovating to equip our advisors with cutting-edge, award-winning marketing tools that make client engagement and business growth effortless,” said Michelle Fee, founder and CEO of Cruise Planners. “By providing fresh, dynamic content with ease, we empower our advisors to focus on what they excel at—crafting unforgettable vacations!”

Cruise Planners announced 20 new and exciting initiatives during their annual convention. For a full list of those announcements, click here.

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 hands-on 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.

Cruise Planners received a 99% franchise owner satisfaction report from Franchise Business Review for 2024. 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/.

SOURCE Cruise Planners Franchising, LLC