Company News

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. Dec. 29- Cruise Planners is ending 2022, an exceptional year of strong travel sales, with the honor of the highest recognition from a travel supplier, the distinguished “Chairman’s Award” from Celebrity Cruises.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. Dec. 27- With the myriad of offers and promotions that are available from travel suppliers, consortia partners, Cruise Planner’s Home Office team and more, Cruise Planners has created a new tool called the Amenity Tracker. This tool will help streamline and organize these perks by allowing agents to add any kind of amenity such as onboard credits, prepaid gratuities, beverage packages, specialty dining, Wi-Fi and more to a reservation in Cruise Planners’ proprietary booking engine CP Maxx. “This tool was an idea from one of our top producing advisors. It will save him and his team several hours and ensure that they are delivering all of the amenities that were promised to their clients at the time of booking,” said Brian Shultz, Cruise Planners’ chief information officer. The amenity tracking features enable agents to add the amenity type, assign dollar values and special notes to their clients. Advisors also have the ability to show these amenities on their customer’s invoice and in their myTrips accounts for their upcoming trip. “We rolled out several new tools our at our annual convention including our patent-pending trip planning tool LivePlanner and that was just the beginning of what we had in store,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and founder of Cruise Planners. “With LivePlanner and Amenity Tracker, we are again delivering tools that help our advisors stand out from the competition and work more efficiently to have time to make more sales.” Additionally, advisors can run reporting through the Amenity Tracker tool for any date range of departures. This removes the need to keep spreadsheets, review reservation comments and any other way that advisors have been keeping track of amenities on reservations. Advisors can also check off when an amenity has been confirmed and added to the reservation as well.

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.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. Nov. 2 – To infinity and beyond! Cruise Planners is excited to announce that they are working with Space Perspective to offer their clients a chance to break barriers and go beyond the final frontier: space. Cruise Planners has reserved two full capsules scheduled to fly in 2025 & 2027, respectively, on Spaceship Neptune, developed to be the most accessible, most sustainable, and safest spacecraft on or above Planet Earth. The six-hour journey takes eight Explorers and a pilot to the edge of space in a luxurious pressurized capsule propelled by a SpaceBalloon™.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. Oct. 17, 2022 – Cruise Planners continues its awards streak to take home three GOLD and two SILVER Travel Weekly Magellan awards after also being named a Top 100 “Most Innovative Franchises” from Franchise Business Review. Travel Weekly’s Magellan Awards recognizes top travel organizations worldwide and honored Cruise Planners’ outstanding work with a high standard of excellence within the travel industry. This year, Cruise Planners received five Magellan Awards for the brand’s superior STAR University training program (GOLD), innovative CP Social marketing program (GOLD), S.O.A.R dashboard analytics tool for agents (GOLD) and CP Mobile & CP Maxx Mobile technology application (SILVER). Cruise Planners franchise owner Claire Maguire also won a Magellan award in the “Individual Travel Advisor - Marketing-Promotions with Purpose” category (SILVER). “The Magellan Awards are a premiere benchmark for Cruise Planners and we are thrilled to add five to our collection this year,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and founder of Cruise Planners. “It reiterates why we dedicate so much of our resources to making sure our marketing, training and technology programs are top notch.” Travel Advisor Organizations- Marketing- Social Media CP Social Program Travel Advisor Organizations- Overall- Business Strategy- S.O.A.R Dashboard Travel Advisor Organizations- Overall- Training Program- STAR University Travel Advisor Organizations- Overall-Technology Solutions- CP Mobile & CP Maxx Mobile Individual Travel Advisor - Marketing-Promotions with Purpose- Make your Bucket List Trip a Reality Book CP Social Program- GOLD WINNER Cruise Planners innovative CP Social Program is a one-stop shop for advisors to share social media content. Advisors can choose between three levels of this program which includes a free, basic version, a Pro version and an Elite version. The CP Social Program posts daily curated content to advisors’ Facebook, Instagram and provides quality content on their Google Business Profile. Cruise Planners also runs monthly localized Facebook ad campaigns, designs the creative content with customized fields and builds the audiences based on the product being featured. All completely hands off for their advisors, so they can focus on making connections and book travel. SOAR Dashboard- GOLD WINNER The “S.O.A.R. Dashboard” stands for Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results and allows our agents to easily track these key metrics. This new feature in Cruise Planners’ list of tools keeps track of franchisees’ goals and their attainment, helping to keep them focused and on track to achieve them. The dashboard breaks down the advisor’s business into over 120 metrics that will allow them to see where they have their strengths, their opportunities, and most importantly their results. STAR University & Training Events- GOLD WINNER When it comes to training agents, Cruise Planners has nearly 30 years of success with their signature Sales Training to Accelerate Results (STAR University™) training program. It features six days of in-depth learning and networking that is the baseline for our franchisees to be able to start their travel career and be successful. Cruise Planners also offers over 500+ online courses for every facet of the travel industry including: Cruises, Land Tours & Resorts, Luxury and Group Travel, Travel Insurance and more. CP Maxx Mobile & CP Mobile- SILVER WINNER CP Maxx mobile is a full-featured, travel advisor assistant app that syncs with our revolutionary and proprietary booking engine, CP Maxx. Agents can send quotes to clients, manage leads, and book travel directly from their smart device, make payments, sell excursions and more. Clients also have their own app as well called CP Mobile. Clients can favorite a resort, tour, or cruise itinerary for their advisor to see, request additional details with the click of a button, make payments and more.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. Sep.1, 2022 – After a lengthy and careful research process, Cruise Planners announced they will join the Signature Travel Network effective September 29, 2022. Cruise Planners previously was affiliated with American Express’s Travel Representative program for 18 years, which was set to end in December 2022. With over six-decades in the travel industry, Signature continues to attract the travel industry's most successful and prominent retailers. The decision to join Signature came down to shared values that Cruise Planners believes will enhance the travel experience for clients of their 2500-strong home-based travel agent franchise network.