CLIA shifts agent-member focus from agency to individual retailers

CLIA is hoping to turn around a decades-long slide in travel agent participation with a new membership structure that emphasizes individual agents rather than agencies.

As part of the effort, cruise line members of CLIA are kicking in a number of bonuses, incentives and privileges to encourage individual agents to join.

For many agents, the price of membership will now be $49, down from $119 previously. Other agents could pay $99, still lower than the prevailing level.

In return, agents will qualify for bonus commissions, reduced rates on personal travel and priority status for sought-after training or ship tours.

"It doesn't mean we won't have other agents on our ships, but CLIA agents will be the first ones to get priority," said Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean International's senior vice president of sales, trade support and service.

CLIA currently has nearly 13,000 agency members and about 2,000 individual members. The association added individual memberships in 2007, mostly to appeal to home-based, independent contractors working with host agencies.

Now, it is rolling back the basic membership cost to the 2007 level. Moreover, it is creating two new high-level membership tiers: gold for agencies with 25 to 99 agents, and diamond for those with 100 or more agents.

Individual memberships for agents at those agencies will cost $49 a year.

The landmark revision evolved over 18 months and more than 85 meetings with agents, agency groups, cruise lines and outside consultants, according to CLIA President and CEO Christine Duffy.

"Fundamentally the change is moving from what for 40 years has been an agency membership model, to [become] agency and individual agent membership," she said. "That's the big shift."

The new model will enable CLIA to build a database of individual agents, rather than just agencies. Until now, the association has known that its 13,000 agency members represented about 50,000 agents, but it had no direct relationship with them.

"Now, each individual agent becomes somebody real, with an ID number where we know who they are, [someone] that we can engage with," Duffy said.

The number of CLIA agency members has been declining since the mid-1990s, driven in part by consolidating distribution, Duffy said. CLIA hopes its new incentives can reverse that trend.

The need for a new membership structure was driven by technological change, the increased number of home agents and the rise of multiple large travel agent host companies and consortia, Duffy said.

In addition, cruise lines offer more product training than ever, especially through online courses and webinars. Cruise and agency leaders felt a need to streamline and coordinate those efforts, Duffy said.

From Avoya Travel to Virtuoso, almost every sizeable consortium or agency group has agreed to join at the $5,000 diamond level, CLIA said.

John Lovell, president of Travel Leaders Leisure Group and Vacation.com, compared the situation to that of the real estate industry, where consumers are confident in the credentials of licensed Realtors.

"The same isn't necessarily true of travel agents, even if their agency is a CLIA member," Lovell said. "If more individual agents highlight their personal CLIA designation and work to complete CLIA certifications, that should resonate with any consumer planning a cruise vacation."

Lovell said that by reducing membership costs, "CLIA is definitely working to entice more agents to join and participate."

The basic agency membership will remain at $339 a year. Agencies with up to 24 agents can enroll the first agent at the $49 individual price and the rest at $99 each.

Duffy said CLIA is also waiving the $80 application fee that has historically been charged for agency sign-up.

Agents will not be able to join CLIA without being affiliated with a CLIA member agency or host, Duffy said.

She said she does not anticipate that agency groups will require CLIA membership in the way that Signature recently made membership in ASTA a requirement for members.

The full package of benefits from cruise lines has a "hard" value of $3,600, Duffy said.

The specific benefits will vary from line to line and will be administered by member companies, Duffy said. Details will be posted on the CLIA website and can be viewed after membership is obtained, she added, but she gave a few examples.

Many CLIA member cruise lines will offer a $50 bonus for the first booking; some will offer $75. Cunard Line will offer four $50 bonuses per agent. The bonuses alone could more than pay for an individual membership, Duffy said.

At Royal Caribbean, Freed said benefits will include a coupon booklet of onboard items worth $200, additional reductions on existing agent rates for personal travel, bonus commissions on select sailings, listing in Royal's travel agent finder Web tool and priority for Seminars at Sea and ship tours.

Of the North America CLIA member lines, only Disney Cruise Line is not participating by offering agent benefits.

Duffy also said that only agents with $5,000 or more in annual commissions will be eligible for CLIA membership but that the policy will be enforced at the agency or host level. So, if an agency or host has a novice agent it wants to nominate for CLIA membership, it can do so.

The $3,000 gold level of agency membership comes with a newly created premium member summit, which will be held annually at a yet-to-be-determined site. It also includes preferential pricing at CLIA's annual Cruise3sixty conference.

Among the benefits at the diamond level will be invitations to CLIA's Congressional Cruise Caucus held in Washington in June.

Registration for the new memberships opened Oct. 1. CLIA said there will be additional features of the new structure that will continue to be unveiled over the next three years, starting at Cruise3sixty in Fort Lauderdale next April.