19 January 2009

TravelMoleÃ¢â¬â¢s Secret Agent knows she canÃ¢â¬â¢t compete on cruise

I see it's Cruise month on Travelmole. Well l just have to have my say.

Do l enjoy cruise enquiries? No.....Why? Because all they ever are, are enquiries. Very rarely, so rare l cannot remember the last one, do they ever turn into bookings.

Am l a bad sales person, am l hiking on extra booking fees? No. l just simply cannot beat prices that customers have already been quoted.

They generally have had prices from cruise clubs, and how do you compete with their prices, when they are quoting fares lower than mine would be with all my commission taken off, and on-board credit of $300!

Also the likes of Thomson have discounts so low that if l were to match it l would be working for 2% commission. Just can’t do it.

I know the cruise clubs have massive buying power and can secure great deals with the cruise lines but where does that leave the poor little homeworker?

Without a booking, is where it leaves me.

So when a customer calls with a cruise enquiry my heart deflates. I get them a price, knowing very well they won’t pay it, and l spend very little time with them because l know they will never book with me.

No matter how polite, thorough and helpful l am, if l am £200/300 per person more than they have been quoted already, they are not going book with me. I wish them ‘Bon Voyage’ and move onto the next caller.

Short and sweet this week as the calls are buzzing.

It has been really very busy on the phones since just after Christmas. People are booking.

Being very cautious and taking a lot of convincing to get them to commit but the low deposits that most tour operators are offering is definitely helping.

But will that all fall flat on its face when its time to pay the balance? Are we going to have a surge of cancelled bookings because they cannot really afford it? Only time will tell.

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Your Comments (2)

That proves the point!

Since Future Travel is a Coop subsidiary getting the best cruise rates this proves the point - the big will get bigger and the rest may as well opt out of selling cruise!

By Barry Peters, Thursday, January 22, 2009
CRUISE HOMEWORKING SUCCESS

I find this quite ironic. Future Travel's cruise specialist home-working division Instant Cruise Holidays is up by over 55% compared to the same time last year. Sales are flooding in. So I disagree with your comments that home-workers selling cruise can't compete!

By Fay Thompson, Wednesday, January 21, 2009