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figure out how to put new customers in the
pipeline.”
Mannix said what is making the issue
more urgent is that travelers are becoming
less loyal to their agents. He pointed to data
from cruise lines suggesting that only 25%
to 30% of cruise buyers use the same agent
for consecutive cruise purchases.
One reason for that, he said, is that
agents promote their product but not
themselves.
“It’s great for you to be selling the cruise
line and doing the mailings,” Mannix said.
“But typically the materials [agents] are
sending out to people have nothing in there
about why the customer should buy from
that agent. What are you doing to promote
you and what’s unique about you and your
depth of knowledge of the area and the in-
tensity of your service?”
That sentiment was echoed by Vicki
Freed, senior vice president of sales for
Royal Caribbean International.
“Agents’ biggest challenge is expand-
ing their client base and keeping existing
clients coming back,” she said. “There are
plenty of great marketing pieces available
for agents: supplier-provided,
Freed said travel agents
must “remind, encourage
and plant the referral gene” in their clients’
minds so that when those clients brag about
a cruise to their friends, they not only cite
the merits of the cruise but also the quality
of the agency that sold it to them.
LEADS
Continued from Page 1
their existing database to find, qualify and
expand the customers within that group.
Vicky Garcia, senior vice president of
sales and marketing for Cruise Planners,
said her group did a great deal of marketing
for its members and also provided myriad
tools to franchises that enable them “to do
as much or as little as they want with their
business.”
“Those who are new to the industry
might need more help to generate leads at
‘Agents’ biggest chal-
lenge is expanding their
client base and keeping
clients coming back.’
— Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean
first,” she said. “And we have programs to
help them from day one, even providing
them with their own database of 200 ‘cruis-
ers’ to market to.”
Cruise Planners then provides them with
marketing materials and education pro-
grams to teach them to market and gener-
ate their own leads.
‘No matter how good
you are, sooner or later
your customers will
stop buying from you.’
gle to deal with the complexity of trying to
reach those prospects, even if they live next
door.”
Many consumers looking online will
inevitably end up at the cruise lines’ own
websites, where they will often buy direct.
Crystal Cruises’ lead-generation program, offered only to its top agents, forwards to the agents calls that consumers
make to Crystal.
Crystal charges agents $6,000 per year
for the leads. The line says
that averages out to about
$22 per lead, while it says
each lead costs Crystal $230
to generate.
Crystal executives say they
find it surprising that many
agents do not capitalize on
this valuable resource.
“We’re giving them these
incredible leads, and they are
taking two hours to respond?’” Bill Smith,
Crystal’s senior vice president of sales, won-
dered last June. “At some point, we’ll start pe-
nalizing people and taking them out.”
Nitsa Lewis, vice president of marketing
for Crystal, said the agents who are most
successful with the program “give great
attention to immediate follow-up. They
understand that we are giving them a ‘hot
lead’ and need to treat it as such. If they
don’t respond quickly or provide a level
of service that is anticipated as a Crystal
Cruises agent, they may not get the busi-
ness and are not maximizing the benefits
of the program, for Crystal or for them.”
— Jack Mannix, consultant
Clients ‘need to brag’
“They need to brag about how the travel
agent booked their cruise vacation on Royal
or any cruise line,” she said. “It is the ‘how’
that gets left out of the discussion. There
are [ways] that agents can get that referral
gene into the conversation.”
AVC hangs its hat on its Live Lead pro-
gram, billing itself as the host agency that
is most focused on that aspect of the busi-
ness.
Brad Anderson, co-president of AVC, said
member agents are working “during the
evening from home, and so we’ve invested
tremendous amount of money in our technology. We have focused on making our independent affiliates extremely efficient by
integrating their database with our marketing and booking engines.
“We add the most important ingredient
based on [the Selling Power] survey. We’ve
solved that problem. We connect live new
clients with independent affiliates.”
Lead generation and marketing prowess
are primary reasons many agents turn to
host agencies and consortia.
While most consortia offer some level of
lead generation, marketing tools seem to be
a more important aspect of their programs
than providing live leads.
Mannix claims that AVC is the leader in
terms of lead generation, while most consortia are very effective in helping agents mine
‘Don’t keep me a secret’
Last week, Colette Carlson of
Speak Your Truth.com focused much of her
keynote address at CruiseOne and Cruises
Inc.’s 2010 national conference aboard the
Norwegian Epic on encouraging agents to
make an extra effort to get referrals.
“We’ve got to start asking consistently
for referrals,” Carlson told to the audience.
“It’s common sense, but it’s not common
practice. … It’s as easy as saying, ‘Don’t
keep me a secret.’ ”
Dwain Wall, senior vice president
and general manager of
CruiseOne and Cruises Inc.,
said the company has been
successful at retaining cus-
tomers, with a repeat rate of
three out of five in an indus-
try in which the average is
one out of five.
Still, he said, acquiring
leads is imperative.
“What we’ve got to be bet-
ter at is new customers,” he said. “That’s what
we’re focused on. Whether they are land-
based, river boats or whatever it happens to
be, we need to attract that new consumer.”
He said the company was doing that by
relaunching its consumer website and do-
ing exhaustive research on ways to attract
more site visitors, even using eyeball-track-
ing technology to ascertain how people
behave on websites and buying more key-
words on Google.
“The new consumer sites have helped us
dramatically,” Wall said.
In addition, the company hired a vice
president of marketing and communications from Burger King, Luis Zuniga,
whose entire focus is to create brand recognition for CruiseOne and Cruises Inc.
“We don’t want to just give them fish;
we’d rather teach them how to fish,” Gar-
cia said. “We believe the agent’s biggest
strength is as a consultant, a professional
to help guide the customer to the right
product. They can’t all be marketing ex-
perts, too.”
Koepf said AVC’s Live Lead program was
the main reason he returned to retail.
“There are a number of host models out
‘An agent’s biggest
strength is as a consultant. They can’t all be
marketing experts, too.’
— Vicky Garcia, Cruise Planners
www.northstartravelmedia.com
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas L. Kemp
Chief Financial Officer Linda Li Davachi
Executive Vice President/Group Publisher Robert G. Sullivan
Executive Vice President, Digital Media Thomas Cintorino
Vice President/Group Publisher Bernard Schraer
Vice President/Editorial Director Lori Cioffi
Vice President/Editor-In-Chief Arnie Weissmann
Vice President, Human Resources Janine L. Bavoso
Director, Internet Production Roberta Bianchi-Muller
Vice President, Content Licensing Sheila Rice
Director, I T Infrastructure and Operations Rich Mastropietro
there, and many are excellent and provide
excellent services,” he said. “AVC goes be-
yond providing service and the amalgama-
tion of business. It’s a marketing company.
… That is the beauty of this relationship.
They have their own business, but now
they have a marketing resource that works
for them.”
Anderson said the Internet compounds
the already difficult task of prospecting
because so much shopping is done online,
which is an elusive landscape in which to
look for prospects.
“Consumers are now shopping for everything — cars, toys for Christmas and vacations — by going online and researching,”
Anderson said. “Most agents, whether they
are home-based or brick-and-mortar, strug-
