Consortia: Connecting Consumers With Advisors Online

The leading travel industry consortia are continually seeking new technological advancements and enhancements to help their members stay one step ahead of the competition. Here are some of the latest moves on that front.

American Express Rides the ‘Insider’ Track

American Express has invested significantly in new technology as a way of connecting agents both with each other and with their clients. “Technology is changing not only how consumers may be booking travel, but it’s opening doors for the way travel agents communicate with each other,” says Yana Gutierrez, vice president, strategic partnerships, American Express Consumer Travel. Clients can visit amextravel.com to connect with specialists—called Travel Insiders within the consortia.

The Travel Insiders program has also seen significant investment, Gutierrez added. “Our travel counselors really love it because it does demonstrate why travel agents are valuable to travelers,” she says. “Consumers are increasingly looking for more specialized trip experiences.” The program lets agents choose two specific niches in which they can specialize (whether destinations or a particular type of travel) and offers them educational opportunities within those areas of expertise. As such, these agents have the latest information to offer clients.

Last year, AmEx announced the Travel Insider Accreditation program, an “enhancement” to its existing program that offers an added level of accreditation, ensuring that the agents remain up-to-date in their specialized area. “The program is ultimately built to drive additional leads to our counselors,” Gutierrez says.

Ensemble’s Rice: “Members are updating their sites more often” because the new platform is much more user-friendly.
 
Ensemble’s Rice: “Members are updating their sites more often” because the new platform is much more user-friendly.

American Express also recently launched a new internal platform to connect the call centers and the home-based travel agents. “It’s essentially a private social media site just for travel counselors,” Gutierrez says. “We are evaluating how we may be able to bring this to our Representative Network as well.” The number of American Express home-based agents rose last year when the company closed its remaining storefronts, freeing the agents to work wherever they wanted.

“Over the last 10 years we have made significant investments in the people, platforms and technology for our work-at-home network,” Gutierrez says. “We’ve been watching the evolution of how customers interact with us—where the physical presence was less needed, and was replaced with wanting access to travel counselors based on the customers’ preference of phone, e-mail or online.”

The feedback from agents, she added, has been largely positive. American Express Travel’s U.S. Representative Network is a franchise model that accounts for approximately $5 billion in travel sales volume and has locations throughout the U.S.

RELATED: American Express Honors 25 Agents With Representative Excellence Awards

Ensemble: The Next Generation

The term “Next Generation” is tossed around regularly in terms of technology, but Ensemble Travel Group has gone a step further, incorporating them into the names of two new platforms.

The “Next Generation” Extranet (internal portal) and “Next Generation” ClientSite (consumer-facing website) were both developed in-house by Ensemble’s IT department. The Extranet provides member access to all Ensemble information and travel tools, including exclusive offers and fam trips, and access to the Ensemble Express booking engines (which includes the new Ensemble Car Express tool). Agents can also use the site to create consumer- and agency-facing flyers in hard copy or for e-mail distribution. Beyond that, partners can get exposure opportunities through ad space and connection with members.

“The B2B platform helps [member agents] understand what our products are, what special offers are available to our members, etc.,” Ensemble Co-President Libbie Rice tells Travel Agent. The last major platform launch for the consortia was probably around five years ago, she added. In those years, technology had changed and agents needed new ways of leveraging what was available. The new site, Rice says, had more “bells and whistles” that would help agents do their job. “We really wanted to completely change, to think about the business differently,” she says. “It’s a radical departure from what our old site was. It’s much more intuitive for us to maintain.”

Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso, says that the goal of the new Virtuoso.com is to allow consumers to be as collaborative as possible in planning their trips.
Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso, says that the goal of the new Virtuoso.com is to allow consumers to be as collaborative as possible in planning their trips.

The new Ensemble ClientSite (consumer-facing website) lets members update their own webpage (which is powered by Ensemble) with a drag-and-drop interface. With the new editor tool, videos, photographs, maps, and text can be added or moved as needed. Members can choose from more than 70 design templates to customize their brand, or build their own HTML and CSS directly in the editor function. There are also new blogging features (good for updating from fam trips) that allow everyone within an agency to share their insights and experiences, helping clients find an agent that specializes in what they need.

The platform, Rice says, is significantly more user-friendly, and she notes that one result is that “We see that our members are updating their sites more often.” Ensemble, which has more than 850 agencies across the U.S. and Canada, has also improved their member sites’ search engine optimization, making them easier to find in Google listings. Training and education are also key elements of Ensemble’s technology platforms.

RELATED: Ensemble Unveils 2014 Hotel and Resort Directory

Signature’s ‘Client Reach’ Enables More Selling Time

Signature Travel Network, which has 212 member agencies with 410 locations in North America, is known for being extremely active in pushing new technology capabilities to its members under the auspices of Karen Yeates, its executive vice president of information technologies.

The most recent project released is its new Customer Relations Management (CRM) technology, called Client Reach. Currently in its first phase, the system allows Signature advisors to set up automated communications to their clients. The idea is to engage with customers more frequently and at a higher level, a practice that is known to prevent the likelihood of cancellations. Client Reach uses Res Cards as its backbone; hence, advisors would be wise to increase the amount of specific data they have on each client as much as possible, giving Signature the opportunity to send out truly customized e-mails on their behalf. Communications can include basics, such as final payment reminders, welcome-home messages, requests for referrals, and surveys for feedback. Consultants that accurately complete their Res Cards on a regular basis will be rewarded with these automatic messages to clients and will also have the opportunity to earn commission on any ancillary services that are booked by clients receiving these messages.

“Client Reach allows our travel consultants to spend more time selling and thus boost their earning capability,” says Yeates. As for matching up advisors with potential clients via the Signature proprietary website, Ignacio Maza, Signature’s executive vice president, says that “as a member-owned organization, Signature’s focus is and will always be to promote our members’ individual brands. By design, we do not have a central, Signature-branded website that matches up advisors with potential clients.” Having said this, he added, Signature members do a good job of matching up their travel consultants with potential clients, within their individual consumer websites.

“A great example is Travelstore, which revamped its website and showcases their travel experts prominently,” says Maza. “If you visit www.travelstore.com you will see a tab at the top that says ‘travel experts’. If you click on that, all the Travelstore consultants show up, with all their specialties. In addition,[consumers] can also search for a particular area of the world [e.g. Africa] and find the top experts within Travelstore.”

Maza added that each of Signature’s members has a slightly different approach through their individual website, “but they can all match the consumer with the right person within their office/company.”

Aside from engaging with clients, Signature is making a big push to engage with its member agencies this year to be sure they’re using all of the tools and programs available to them. This year there will be regional meetings for owners and managers, followed by a full day of luxury and sales seminars, focused on specific segments of the travel industry, for travel consultants, such as luxury cruises and adventure travel, family travel, groups, and custom/FIT travel. And, to further strengthen its member-related efforts, Signature just hired Shannon Garrett, who will be the network’s new manager of member engagement.

RELATED: Signature Recognizes "Horizon Club" Top Producing Agencies

Travel Leaders Integrates ‘InteGREAT Enterprise’

Travel Leaders’ new InteGREAT Enterprise is comprised of four marketing and technology initiatives launched by Travel Leaders over the past three years that have now been rolled into one suite.

Here’s the skinny on the popular program.

Travel Leaders Online: Introduced in 2012, Travel Leaders Online comprises two channels. The first is the consortium’s website, which has been optimized as a lead-generating tool. It successfully matches consumers with agents through simple location searches, as well as through more sophisticated and comprehensive searches for specific types of travel using Travel Leaders’ Agent Profiler, which now has over 3,500 agent specialists.

The second channel is the Associate Website Program, which not only provides members with their own Web presence, but also allows them to engage consumers and build relationships online with social media tools.

Luxury Portfolio: This series of multi-touch marketing campaigns focuses on lifestyle themes of particular interest to Travel Leaders’ luxury clientele, as well as to preferred luxury suppliers and the leading TL agencies selling them.

InteGREAT Campaigns: Members have access to proprietary direct-mail and e-mail marketing tactics, as well as the customizable Postcards magazine, along with Ultratravel magazine.

IC InteGREAT: This latest innovation is a marketing and database management tool designed to allow eligible Independent Contractors (ICs) to have control and choices over their marketing efforts, including for their own personalized Agent Profiler pages on the national site, direct mail, e-mail, consumer travel magazines and customized promotional pages.

“I have come to understand that what we sell every day isn’t the travel,” says Jose Ferreira, Travel Leaders Group’s vice president of technology and marketing. “We sell what they can’t get just anywhere—the trust and the relationship with our travel agent experts. That is the unique differentiator that each of our travel advisors possesses with each of their clients.”

That approach is apparently working. On Travelleaders.com, when the franchise changed its focus from product to agent, organic unique visitors to the site over a five-month period increased 25 times as the conversation shifted from price to one of value, says Ferreira.

Travel Leaders’ Nexion subsidiary, meanwhile, recently launched OnTarget, an interactive online marketing center. Complimentary to Nexion agents, it offers social media and e-mail marketing solutions. The three OnTarget modules provide e-mail marketing, access to a content library and the option to subscribe to automated social media posts.

Travel Leaders Franchise Group has over 1,250 system-wide full-service and client-dedicated franchised locations in North America that produce annual sales of over $5 billion.

RELATED: Travel Leaders Adds 150 Properties to Luxury Hotel Program

Vacation.com's New Site Helps Agents ‘Belong, Inspire, Grow’

Vacation.com revealed details of its new brand that the consortium says is positioned around travel agents’ aspirations to “Belong. Inspire. Grow.” The updated tagline better reflects the industry-leading role outlined in the organization’s positioning statement: “Vacation.com is an innovative network of professionals that celebrates highly driven travel agencies by supporting them with the tools to help them grow and inspire.”

Key to this fresh positioning is a revamped member recruitment website, joinvacation.com, and new brand logos specifically designed for its 5,100 members and supplier partners to market themselves as Vacation.com.

Vacation.com’s Lovell: ‘Belong, Inspire, Grow’ “underscores our commitment” to the travel agency business.

Vacation.com’s Lovell: ‘Belong, Inspire, Grow’ “underscores our commitment” to the travel agency business.

“‘Belong, Inspire, Grow’ is more than just a tagline. It’s Vacation.com’s deep-rooted philosophy that underscores our commitment to further cultivating the travel agency business so it may flourish for years to come,” explained Vacation.com President John Lovell to members of the media at a press conference in January. “What we hope to accomplish is to let those travel agencies that are equally passionate about travel as they are about expanding their business know that we share their passion and can provide a home where they’ll feel they belong. We will help to inspire them and their clients,” says Travel Leaders Group Chief Marketing Officer Stephen McGillivray. “Ultimately, this initiative is about professional and personal growth, and Vacation.com’s overriding commitment to helping all of our members and supplier partners achieve that.”

As part of the rebrand, the Vacation.com member recruitment website join vacation.com now offers a fresh, more agile look and feel and reorganized site navigation, Vacation.com says. The website also contains updated content, highlighting Vacation.com programs and tools offered to members, along with a Benefits Calculator to showcase how one can benefit from a Vacation.com membership. Vacation.com’s member recruitment website is now compatible with a variety of devices, including tablets and mobile phones.

This new branding campaign will build upon Vacation.com’s focus of providing exemplary member service, elite training and exclusive resources to its members. It is part of a series of recent enhancements at Vacation.com. In December, the company announced several improvements to its member-facing technology, including the development of a consumer booking engine for CruisePRO, better automation to the back-end applications for Cruise Space, configurable permissions for Agent Universe users, and a single sign-on application for Stream.

RELATED: Vacation.com Reports Agent Training Record

Virtuoso.com Unites Advisors and Potential Clients

It’s been years in the making, but Virtuoso in January unveiled a totally new version of Virtuoso.com, whose most notable feature is that it allows consumers to find a travel advisor.

The advisor search can be refined around travel types such as family, beach history, honeymoon, food and wine, night life and destinations. Advisors are presented in default order closest to the IP address of the user.

A tool called “Meet Your Advisor” simplifies the entire process by letting the consumer answer a few quick questions, such as whether they like to shop, if they like adventure, or if they are seeking honeymoon travel, to determine what kind of traveler they are.

“Consumers can now go to Virtuoso.com and, just like Match.com, find the perfect travel advisor for themselves and their family,” says David Kolner, senior vice president of consumer for Virtuoso. Once the consumer has signed on with an advisor, they can rate their experience with them on the site and provide comments; they can do the same with the hotels they stay at. All comments are verified.

Consumers can also actively search for hotels and suppliers they might want to use on their trips.

“The site is actually really pretty simple,” says Kolner. “It gives consumers the controls to help them plan their own trip and shows them Virtuoso’s collection of preferred hotels, cruises, airlines and other travel products.”

Hotel photo galleries are served up to consumers who can then filter their needs down to certain criteria. Meanwhile, on the right-hand side of the screen, the amenities offered via Virtuoso’s robust “Best of the Best” hotels program are revealed to the consumer; these amenities are available only by booking through an advisor.

The entire goal is to allow the consumer to be as collaborative as possible in planning their trip. In today’s society, everyone has access to travel information; so much of it, in fact, almost everyone can consider themselves an expert. Anecdotal research shows, however, that having too many vacation choices can actually cause stress on a person. That “information overload” syndrome can be easily cured by an expert travel advisor.

Still, consumers have indicated they do not want to give up their ability to use their knowledge to plan their own trips. When Virtuoso conducted a research project two years ago, using 80 advisor members to determine why a consumer would not use a travel advisor, the overall consensus was that, “Travelers feel that doing their own planning is empowering and that giving it up will diminish their experience,” says Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso. “Their prevalent Internet use causes them to believe they have all the answers they need. They believe an advisor adds to the cost of their trip, and do not understand the value that an advisor adds, or that an advisor is readily available.”

The luxury consortium calls this informative paragraph of findings its “DNA of Our Success,” which will serve as the basis for any of Virtuoso’s programs and initiatives that directly touch consumers.

Virtuoso comprises 335 agencies with more than 7,200 travel advisors in 20 countries in North and South America, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand. The network’s member agencies generate over $12.5 billion annually in travel sales. Virtuoso reports that in 2013, sales showed an overall 11 percent increase year-over-year, with especially strong increases coming from its members based in Latin America.