Cruise Planners/American Express this week is rolling out a series of new products under the name CP Vacations: A set of cruises packaged with pre- and post-sailing land stays and excursions.
“The ‘CP’ doesn’t stand for Cruise Planners. It’s ‘Completely Packaged,'" said Vicky Garcia, executive vice president of sales and marketing. "These are cruises that can’t be duplicated anywhere else,”
“Our agents have always been able to customize a cruise with [add ons], but what we’ve done is take select sailings and package these options in,” she added.
CP Vacations was introduced at the franchise network’s annual conference in late October, she said. 
“This was created based on feedback from our agents, and they went nuts at the conference when we rolled it out."
"We have blocked cabins and we’ve [secured] special commission rates for these cruises," Garcia said.
She explained that the network created some themed cruises as part of CP Vacations offerings. For example, one cruise in Hawaii has a veterans theme, with special onboard speakers and tours of Pearl Harbor.
CP Vacations offers a variety of 2012 sailings. If the products are successful, said Garcia, the program will continue in 2013.
In other news from the conference, which was held at El Dorado Royale, in Riviera Maya, CruisePlanners announced eRes Mobile, an application that lets the network’s franchisees “run their businesses from their phones if they want to,” said Garcia.
“You only need a smartphone to do it. Using eConnect, our mobile device connection, agents have full access to everything in our eRes system,” she explained.
For consumers, the company debuted Cruisitude, an app that connects customers directly to their agent and to CruisePlanners’ inventory.
“Consumers using this app who aren’t already working with a CruisePlanners’ agent can look up the agent who is closest to them, by address or ZIP code,” said Garcia.
A new Facebook tool also was introduced at the Mexico gathering. At no cost to its members, CruisePlanners will build each franchisee a Facebook page and post items to it about the network’s news, industry news and sales promotions.
“Of course we’d like our members to be engaged themselves on Facebook, but if they want us to post for them, we will," Garcia said. "We also will give them stats on who likes them."