Major players in cruise specialty agency circles are giving Cruise Holidays a fresh look because of recent enhancements to CruiseWeb, the travel franchise’s proprietary software system. The enhancements have been especially attractive to large and mid-size cruise-focused agencies that have recently joined Cruise Holidays as "affiliates.” This means they are keeping their business names but are taking advantage of Cruise Holidays’ technology and marketing programs, and will refer to themselves as, "An Affiliate of Cruise Holidays” on their marketing pieces.

In addition to the new affiliates, all existing Cruise Holidays travel franchise owners are benefitting from the improvements.

Specifically, Cruise Holidays has taken major strides with its proprietary technology called CruiseWeb. CruiseWeb has made the transition from being a back office accounting tool to now fully encompassing all aspects of the franchisees’ booking, financial and marketing activities. In order for this to take place, CruiseWeb needed a fully-integrated booking tool, and the franchise network’s recent integration with Sabre Cruises is making it possible.

How It Works

At the onset of the booking, frontline agents enter client data and sailing search criteria into CruiseWeb, which then offers Sabre’s real-time pricing search results. Once confirmed in Sabre, the booking data is maintained in CruiseWeb to manage, add additional items, invoice clients, and track all accounting and transactions.

Efficiences Gained

"Overall, CruiseWeb is a superior product for managing our front-office and back-office operations in one system,” said a representative of one of the new Cruise Holidays affiliates.

"We were especially impressed with our ability to manage the agent incentive structure or compensation structure so reservations auto calculate the amount due to counselors. Once our counselors are paid, if a change to the booking is made that affects the agent payout, CruiseWeb facilitates this,” he added. Another major advantage to the technology: Groups can now be loaded into CruiseWeb and then auto-populate onto the consumer-facing Web site.

Another new affiliate cited dramatic efficiencies gained in his operations since joining Cruise Holidays. "Change is always tough. The idea of moving 15 years of reservation data from one system to another kept me up at night, he said. "But the Cruise Holidays team did things right and are incredibly responsive. Not only does Cruise Holidays deliver what they promise, the speed in which they respond to our requests has been amazing. I don't know how they do it,” he added.

"’Efficiency’ is the key word that is resonating most with our new affiliates, as well as all of our Cruise Holidays franchise owners,” said Mark Schiffner, vice president and COO of Cruise Holidays. "We don’t need more technology – we need less technology that does more, and we are proud that after a major financial investment and countless hours here at headquarters we have created what we feel is the leisure travel industry’s top front office to back office system,” said Schiffner.

The efficiencies go beyond technology and encompass other major aspects of the Cruise Holidays franchise and affiliate offering. For example:

• Marketing: Cruise Holidays offers a completely "layered” approach to marketing, whereby all marketing efforts (direct mail, Web site program, e-mail marketing, etc.) are inter-linked with the suite of technology solutions. This improves transactional efficiencies for the franchise owner and provides the opportunity to obtain pinpoint accuracy in marketing the right products to the right people at the right time.
• Training and Networking: Cruise Holidays offers specialized education and training programs including ongoing online workshops, an advanced group training program, a mid-year meeting, an annual convention and other networking groups that focus on specific topics such as marketing, technology and social networking.  
• Ongoing Support: Cruise Holidays franchise owners, frontline agents and affiliates have unlimited access to support from the Cruise Holidays executive team, which includes business analysis, marketing, public relations and more.
• Benefits from Parent Company, Travel Leaders Leisure Group: In addition to the support from Cruise Holidays headquarters, franchise owners and affiliates have ongoing opportunities to network with and learn from sister companies within Travel Leaders Leisure Group, including Cruise Specialists; wholly-owned Travel Leaders leisure agencies, CruiseDeals.com; All Aboard Travel and SinglesCruise.com.

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