Cruise Sellers

Should Cruise!

By Joanie Ogg, CTC, MCC
President, NACTA

I am truly blessed. As I write this article, I am enjoying a beautiful cruise experience on the spectacular Crystal Serenity on a personal vacation with my husband, Tom. Yes, there is such a thing as the Crystal Experience. In fact, Tom is doing an extensive review of the Serenity that will appear at www.cruisereviews.com sometime in February. I hope all of you will be sure to check it out. Now, let me get back to why cruise sellers should cruise...
There is truly nothing like the passion we feel about a cruise experience and the ability to extend that passion and enthusiasm to our clients is a key to successful selling. The ability to sell a product or service when we have not personally experienced it is certainly a talent. It takes a great deal of research and knowledge. Certainly it would be fun but impossible to sail on every vessel that we might sell. However, it is important to make travel experience a part of your yearly business plan.
NACTA is honored to have tremendous cruise line partners that offer our membership Seminar at Sea experiences. They recognize the need for the selling agents to intimately know the various ships and to personally enjoy all that the cruise line and itinerary have to offer. Every year we offer and escort more than 20 NACTA Seminars at Sea for our membership and other travel professionals. We encourage you to take a look at our current educational offerings at www.nacta.com.
Let’s talk about the benefits to the cruise lines and the agents. Why do the cruise lines want to work with NACTA as a professional trade association to bring agents on their ships? The cruise lines rely on us to bring together professional selling agents for a truly educational and experiential sailing on their various vessels. NACTA has a reputation for offering some of the finest educational seminars in the industry on board the ship during some of the sea days. Seminar topics include: Web Marketing; Selling Groups for Profits; Home Based Travel Agent Marketing and Sales; How to Operate Legally and Efficiently as a Host Agency. And, of course, many of you may have enjoyed the famed NACTA’s Ideas for Prizes. This year, as an added benefit, we will be offering the hosting cruise line’s product seminars.
Our partner cruise lines recognize that agents need to know their product intimately in order to match clients to experience. Having the ability to experience the product personally along with sales and marketing and other educational seminars makes this a win-win for both the cruise lines and the agents who experience these events. The cruise lines we work with are looking to increase their sales and marketing force — and that’s what you are.
The benefits to the agents participating in the cruise experience are invaluable. Home Based agents often feel isolated and unable to network and communicate with other similar professionals. Besides the other communication benefits NACTA offers members, the cruise experiences are without question the most tremendous way to network and learn from your peers. Many agents make lifetime friends among the group of travel professionals who they meet during these events.
Most important, however, are the statistics that the cruise lines share with us about the agents we bring on their ships. They are pleased when they tell us that when tracking business from agents who have attended NACTA’s events, they have seen a 38% average revenue increase in the first 12 months following the Seminar at Sea with NACTA. Needless to say, this works well for all parties involved. The cruise lines are happy with the quality travel professionals we bring on board their ships and the agents are selling more travel as a result of these trips and making more money! It does not get much better than this winning combination.
I encourage you to look at your New Year’s Business Plan for 2006 and beyond, making time to travel. Nothing like the experience will enable to sell with passion. Take the opportunity to learn and experience the products that you sell so that you can possess that personal knowledge about the product that your clients are looking for in their professional travel counselor.