NEW YORK — Vacation.com said at a press conference here
that the AgentMate booking tool will be offered to all member agencies this
year. It was previously only available to Cruise Holidays agencies, the group
for which it was originally developed.
Vacation.com and Cruise Holidays are agent organizations
under the Travel Leaders Group umbrella.
AgentMate was developed for Cruise Holidays in 1994 (the
solution was launched as CruiseWeb and the name was changed in 2013) as an
invoice and accounting tool for non-GDS agencies, according to Kevin Weisner,
Vacation.com’s senior vice president of sales.
It evolved over the 21-year span between 1994 and 2015,
and today includes a customer relationship management system, a group
management system, reporting and analysis, CruisePro integration
(Vacation.com’s proprietary cruise booking platform), automated and
personalized client communications, content management, and lead management.
Jose Ferreira, chief technology officer of Travel Leaders
Franchise & Leisure Group and Vacation.com, said Vacation.com has been
marketing AgentMate internally to agencies where it might be a good fit. It has
received a great response from agents thus far, he said.
Ferreira also said that AgentMate will be continuously
updated with enhancements like expanded product integrations.
Vacation.com President John Lovell, also the president of
Travel Leaders Franchise & Leisure Group, said AgentMate is particularly
compelling because it will give agencies easy access to properties that are a
part of Travel Leaders Group’s Worldwide Hotel Program and Select Hotels &
Resorts. Vacation.com members can currently use both programs, which Lovell
said are amenity-rich and offer commissions of up to 15% in some markets, and
both will be integrated into AgentMate.
AgentMate is primarily meant for non-GDS agencies,
according to Stephen McGillivray, Travel Leaders Group chief marketing officer.
Vacation.com currently has around 5,500 agency members,
Lovell said, and about 3,000 are GDS users — those non-GDS users are the target
market for AgentMate.
However, agencies that do use GDSs can sign up for
AgentMate. Weisner noted they may find some features, like AgentMate’s
commission payment management system, useful.
When asked the cost of AgentMate after the press
conference, Lovell said, “We will have a competitive pricing structure, which
we believe will provide a great return on investment for all subscribers.”
In addition to making AgentMate available to all
Vacation.com members, McGillivray announced that in 2016, all Vacation.com
communications to clients will be personalized down to the agent level.
Vacation.com regularly sends relevant communications to
its agents’ clients both via email and direct mail. It also sends messages
wishing clients a happy birthday and similar. In the past, those communications
were personalized to the agency, directing the client to call a main number.
Now, however, each will include the name and phone number of that client’s
agent.
The messages sent to clients are specific, McGillivray
said, and are segmented based on factors Vacation.com knows about them — past
travel history, age and income level.
“We do all that science for them, and that’s why the
agents love the system,” he said.