Vacation Agent Magazine - May 2009
Tour Tech
Tools for Success
By Kate Rice
Funjet’s Agent Advantage site is designed for easy navigation and maximum profits
Funjet has just relaunched its Funjet Agent Advantage site, and it’s got a lot to offer. The site is packed with tools, products and training that will help you stay competitive in challenging times like these.
Funjet’s site is designed to get you selling right away. You click on the “Current Sale” section to see specials. Many of these have been designed to accommodate the fact that many consumers are booking travel closer to their intended departure dates. Then you can design an e-brochure that gives your clients a customized trip proposal with photos, hotel and destination information, and email it to them. They, in turn, can share this with their family and friend—making it a word-of-mouth marketing tool for you as well as a selling tool. If you don’t know how to make an e-brochure, simply click on the site’s video archive for instructions.
You can search for sales nationwide or look for sales out of a particular region and visit the last-minute sales area, then download a spreadsheet of these offers. The “Fun for Less” program in the “Current Sales” section offers opaque pricing. That is, it includes detailed descriptions of hotels, their amenities and locations, but doesn’t name the hotel.
“It’s a great way for hotels to sell their product through us and for us to pass some awesome savings on to the customer,” says Chad Bolliger, director of travel agency marketing for Funjet. Sales offers are usually posted on Friday and valid until the following Thursday.
At the same time, Funjet recognizes that to succeed in business today, you’ve got to be able to do more than shoot out a quick brochure. And so you want to be sure to use other facets of the site, all of which are easy to see on the opening page. The site has both online and offline marketing tools. Bolliger calls the e-brochure the “crown jewel” of Funjet’s marketing tools. Not only is it full of engaging content, but it’s also customized with the agent’s name and contact information. Funjet also features
other marketing tools, such as e-postcards and its Easy Emailer, which are ways to quickly send compelling offers to your clients.
The marketing section also offers business training, such as 12 selling tips. It has training videos about online marketing through Passport Online, Online Agent and the Go Funjet program, which essentially allows you to put a Funjet Vacations link on your website and earn full commissions on any bookings clients make via your site. Another video covers how to use search engine marketing to drive traffic to your site.
The video archive is an important section. It shows videos about using the site, about Funjet and about VAX Vacation Access, the vacation booking engine with which Funjet works closely. The education and training section has training videos, text-based training and scheduling, and registration for VAX training on a variety of topics.
The agent incentive section covers special privileges and offers for members of the Funjet 500 Club, and information about current agent incentive and bonus offers. This is where you’ll find out about the Fun for Life program, through which you can earn “Funjet points” to be cashed in for merchandise, bonus commissions and travel certificates.
The site’s product section includes a video describing Funjet’s many products—charter, scheduled air, hotel-only, air-car and air-only vacations. There’s a map on which you can click on a particular city to download air service from that city. The product section also houses a Travel Stimulus Package page, featuring special promotions as well as profit-building tools. These include hotel-only packages with 15 percent commission and the ability to set your own commission as high as 25 percent.
The form section holds brochure-request documents, price-match forms and pre-approval forms for co-operative marketing campaigns, among others. A travel articles and news section offers news from travel trade publications, Funjet press releases and travel advisories.
The site is easily navigable; you can always see a full menu of what’s on the site and where it is. That means you are rarely more than one click away from the tools and information you need to conduct business.
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