The Travel Franchise launches its cruise division

Initially staffed with three members, the cruise division is predicted to grow quickly over the coming months

Gemma Outram, who joined The Travel Franchise as cruise business development manager, is its first appointment, with more leading members set to join her in the coming weeks.

Multiple departments each feed into the cruise division with The Travel Franchise allocating more team members to its sales and marketing teams to focus on this area of travel. The division will be a gateway between the company’s cruise trade partners and hundreds of homeworking travel franchisees.

As a result of the company’s significant investment in staffing, training, technology and trade partnerships, it predicts sales to triple in the next 12 months.

The Travel Franchise is the recruitment arm of Not Just Travel. Not Just Travel’s dedicated cruise team acts as a business within a business, responding quickly as the cruise market grows at such a fast pace, being agile and responsive to the needs of travel consultants and Not Just Travel’s trade partners.

Following the success of the company’s first-ever Seminar At Sea, which saw nearly 200 travel franchisees benefit from seven days of intensive training aboard the world’s newest cruise ship, NCL’s Prima, the cruise division will provide its consultants with dedicated cruise support.

Not Just Travel’s cruise trade partners will enjoy a raft of benefits including exclusive access to hundreds of consultants and the ability to channel offers and products to its members through seminars, fam trips and exclusive showcase webinars as well as streamlined sales and marketing channels.

Paul Harrison, co-founder of Not Just Travel and The Travel Franchise said: “The cruise market has historically seemed out of reach for many of our franchisees as it’s more complex and can seem intimidating. However, our investment in our new cruise division, which includes our Cruise Mastery Programme, cruise-specific business development managers, a product manager and a dedicated cruise support team will blast open the market to our members.

“We’re providing the knowledge, training and support from the best in the business to enable our consultants to be the best in the business – and make them and our trade partners a lot of money in the process.”

Members can customise their own cruise website, including search, live pricing and promotion. They will access a host of cruise-specific tools, and discuss bookings with two cruise-specific business development managers headed up by a new trade and cruise director, who will be announced soon. Additionally, they will benefit from ready-made social media campaigns and videos, cruise-specific weekly newsletters, news and offers as well as dedicated marketing materials to help attract new clients.