Give and ye shall receive. That appears to be the hope behind the effort being made by several tour operators to give agents more e-marketing tools to help sell their tour product.
While operators have been providing agents with cobranded marketing materials for years, there's been a recent push to take advantage of the ease and convenience of offering those tools online.
As part of Trafalgar Tours' newly launched ePartners program on its website, agents can create cobranded sales and marketing tools that include client reminders; discounted rates, product and service information; client feedback; and weekly client booking reports.
EPartners "is a 'shared custody' strategy where our tour brands share information with our retail partners in order to best serve the clients and generate ongoing bookings," explained Richard Launder, president of TravCorp USA, parent company of Trafalgar and several other tour brands, including Insight Vacations, Brendan, Contiki Vacations and Uniworld. "It is good technology being put to good use."
Operators also are increasingly using the web as a vehicle to pair consumers with agent partners. Apple Vacations just rolled out a more than $1 million "Ask an Agent" marketing campaign. As part of the campaign, Apple said it planned on its website to connect consumers to agencies that have the capability to book Apple online.
"We need agents as well to take hold," said Sandy Babin, vice president of marketing at Apple. "Our campaign was the only thing we could do to give them tools. Agents have got to take hold of it and do something, too. If that buzz starts to spread, that's what going to do it."
Apple's move follows a similar push made by Gogo Worldwide Vacations in January to add an agent locator search engine to its website that enables consumers to enter their zip codes or home cities and receive a list of nearby Gogo agent partners.