CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — Cruise Planners kicked off their annual convention with over 900 franchise owners and advisors in attendance. The 4-day event in Fort Lauderdale concludes with a 3-night inaugural sailing to the Bahamas onboard Princess Cruises’ new ship, Sun Princess.
This year’s convention is centered around the theme “CP World: You’re a Star,” emphasizing how every Cruise Planners travel advisor is a shining star with limitless potential. CP World embodies Cruise Planners’ five brand pillars of providing best in class Marketing, Technology, Training, Support, and Community. These elements are what set Cruise Planners apart from other host and franchise networks, driving success and innovation.
“At Cruise Planners, we take pride in being a leading, innovative host/franchise, and this year is no exception. Our most exciting announcement is the launch of our ASK MAXX AI tool. This cutting-edge technology has excited our advisors, as it dramatically reduces their research time to just mere seconds, making their work faster and more efficient than ever before,” said founder and CEO of Cruise Planners, Michelle Fee.
Cruise Planners announced over 20 new initiatives designed to help Cruise Planner Advisors be more efficient and provide exceptional industry leading service to their clients.
A few of the big announcements included:
- “Ask Maxx” AI Personal Assistant: An industry first, AI-powered assistant, designed to help Cruise Planners advisors quickly access information about destinations, suppliers, itineraries, and all Cruise Planners programs and tools. Ask Maxx delivers fast and accurate responses, making it an essential, time-saving advantage that will serve as their personal assistant to find information quickly. What used to take multiple steps and several minutes to find can now be accessed in just seconds!
- Vax Integration: Advisors can now easily retrieve VAX VacationAccess bookings directly into CP Maxx, Cruise Planners proprietary booking and CRM system. This feature eliminates the need for manual data entry, saving time and effort. Once the booking is retrieved, advisors can easily manage and update it within CP Maxx.
- Hotel Tool Enhancements: Cruise Planners is introducing a new feature called Hotel Sheets for 2025, complementing its existing Hotel Comparisons tool. Hotel Sheets enables travel advisors to select specific rooms and rates from over 2 million properties worldwide, providing clients with tailored options. This tool utilizes live pricing, as well as markup capabilities, ensuring that clients see the most current rates for their chosen room categories.
- Additional CP Maxx Enhancements
More new features include Maxx Snippets, the ability to save blocks of text that are frequently used for easy access. Additionally, Maxx Shortcuts allows advisors to bookmark favorite tools and reports within CP Maxx, personalizing the CP Maxx experience for greater efficiency. - CP Maxx Mobile Enhancements: Maxx Intelligence, an AI tool powered by ChatGPT launched in 2023, is now available in the CP Maxx Mobile app. It allows advisors to access ChatGPT 4.0 from within their mobile device and from anywhere. Advisors can also easily upload videos from iOS or Android devices to the CP Maxx Video Library, streamlining the process and enabling quick sharing in emails or marketing materials.
During this year’s convention, Cruise Planners will host a variety of engaging panels and exciting events throughout the week. Highlights include the highly anticipated Cruise Line Executive Panel featuring senior sales executives from eight major cruise lines, Top Producer panels, a social media presentation with an industry expert, networking opportunities, educational breakout sessions, and much more.
“As we kick off this year’s Cruise Planners convention, it’s truly inspiring to see over 900 of our dedicated franchise owners and travel advisors gathered here. This year’s theme, ‘CP World: You’re a Star,’ is a celebration of the collective success of Cruise Planners and each advisor’s unique role in creating their own blockbuster success story,” said founder and CEO of Cruise Planners, Michelle Fee. “Our north star at Cruise Planners is to provide best-in-class marketing, technology, training, support, and a community that empowers our advisors to reach new heights. Introducing over 20 new and innovative initiatives highlights Cruise Planners as a leader in the travel industry, paving the way for increased efficiency, creativity, and success for our advisors in the years to come.”
More information to follow. Follow #CPCon24 for additional updates.
Company Background: Cruise Planners was founded in 1994 and is the nation’s largest home-based travel agent franchise network. As a leader in the travel franchise industry, Cruise Planners positions a nation-wide network of 2,500 franchise owners for success by providing innovative marketing programs, proprietary and cutting-edge booking and technology tools, as well as professional development and hands-on training with the industry’s top executives. The company continues to be an industry leader and was named the No.1 travel franchise by Entrepreneur magazine for 18 consecutive years and awarded by Franchise Business Review as “Best-In-Category” for 2 years.
Cruise Planners received a 99% franchise owner satisfaction report from Franchise Business Review for 2024. Franchise Business Review also ranked Cruise Planners #3 OVERALL on their list of Top 200 Franchises of 2022. Cruise Planners was recently featured in Entrepreneur as one of the top 30 franchise innovators in technology, has been consistently named as one of the Top Women-Owned Businesses by the South Florida Business Journal, is on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America, and was recognized as one of the Top Workplaces by the Sun Sentinel.
Visit our website, www.cruiseplanners.com, for more information or to view the complete list of awards and honors. For those interested in becoming a franchise owner, please visit https://www.cruiseplannersfranchise.com/.
SOURCE Cruise Planners Franchising, LLC