Thank you for everyone that joined us for our October 24th Coffee Break featuring Barry Karp from ShoreTrips. Please find below the questions and answers from the webinar. If you have any additional questions you can leave them in the comment section below or feel free to e-mail me at smiller@mailpound.com. We hope you will join us this Friday, November 7th, for our next online coffee break featuring Andiamo at 2pm EST. Please click here to register to join www.mailpound.com/coffeebreak. Hope to “see” you all there and have a great week!
Q. Are your excursions available only for cruise ships or are they available for clients staying on land as well?
A. Our shore excursions are available for clients staying on cruises, hotels and villas. We have transportation that can pick them up from their hotel, villa or port. In Europe 15% of our excursions come from hotels.
Q. Do your excursions guarantee getting clients on the cruise ship before they leave port?
A. Yes we are fully insured. We use only the finest tour operators/guides that guarantee to get your clients back in time. We use many tour operators that used to service the small cruise ships. They have worked in the business for a long time and know all the ports. They are in constant communication to get your clients back in time. It has never happened before, but if it did; we would get them to the next port and would probably cost us a free cruise. But like I said that has never happened before.
Q. Do you offer shore excursions in Costa Rica?
A. Yes we service both sides of Costa Rica and offer some wonderful shore excursions.
Q. Do you market directly to our clients if we provide their e-mail address in the referral system?
A. We will send your clients one, and only one, e-mail that day saying that you the travel agent recommends them go to ShoreTrips. Our referral system is set up that if you are ever upset with us you can go in and delete all your referrals if you wanted to. We can also provide you a non compete form if you like. We do not solicit your clients for travel; we strictly sell shore excursions.
Q. If I have a client who is on a cruise and wants to do Dunns River Falls in Jamaica, how do they avoid the crowds of the other cruise ships?
A. We suggest doing Dunns River Falls as late in the day as possible. Most people are out of there by lunch. We offer our water and land activities in the morning and Dunns River Falls in the afternoon.
Q. Do you register as an independent agency or under a host agency?
A. You would tell us who your host agency is. We send all commission checks to the host agency every Wednesday. Accompanied with the check is a statement of the shore excursions covered by the check and the agent who goes with each excursion.
Q. What happens if a ship changes itineraries and the ship skips a port where my client has booked an excursion?
A. Within 6 minutes of us receiving the call your client’s credit card will be refunded in full. If we know ahead of time a ship will be at port Thursday instead of Wednesday we will reschedule everyone and have them notified of the change.
Q. Are their brochures agents can give clients who don’t have access to a computer?
A. We have over 2700 shore excursions which makes it difficult to provide brochures. So we have created a Trip Planner. A Trip Planner is an electronic mini brochure. You would go to our website, www.ShoreTrips.com, and click “Create Trip Planner.” First you would create the cover page which would include your name and phone number, your client’s name, the ship and sailing date. You would then move trips from our site into the planner. We provide you space to write notes to your clients by each trip. We also provide a large text box for you to write a long note to your clients. You would then e-mail it to your client. When you send the e-mail, our system will send the e-mail to you and your agency as well. So when that client books off our system we know they are your client.
Q. Where can I receive a copy of this webinar.
A. We recorded it on MailPound. Click here to watch the seminar
If you have any further questions on this question or any of the above you can go to our website www.ShoreTrips.com or call us at 888.355.0220