CruiseWorld / Home Based Agent Show

It's me again.

Who's going to the Travel Weekly CruiseWorld / Home Based Agent Show in Fort Lauderdale?

I'm going to have a pretty big booth there on the trade show floor, and VTC is sponsoring some pretty key speaking engagements... mostly centered around streamlining your business, making your website work for you, protecting your business... really good stuff from very well known industry leaders like Peter E. Pincus of Marriott and Tom Ogg of HBTACommunity.com!

Stay tuned for more details!

Oh, and we're having a special for all VTCs who want to go - if you enter VTC1 during registration, you save 25%.

Hope I see you there!

Chris

I'll Be Speaking at Travel Weekly's Virtual Trade Show on Wednesday!

Hey VTCs!

Come and check out my presentation on the VTC Program on Wednesday, at 2:30 pm EST at Travel Weekly's Virtual Trade Show! It's my first time presenting VTC at a virtual event, so I'm really excited. If you guys have any suggestions on topics I should cover, or if you want to share your experiences with the program, let me know!

You can register here: http://tinyurl.com/y92gjl3

I'll post my presentation if you guys want to see it.

Chris

How was business in Q1?

We posed the question in March's VTC enewsletter: How was business in the first three months of 2010?

Also, what made business boom or bust for you in the past couple of months? The goal of this post is to get a different reading on how business is going for VTCs, rather than polls that may not reflect as accurately the markets VTCs are targeting, and the various factors that contribute to a VTC's success. Sometimes word-of-mouth reporting is a lot easier to draw solutions from than statistics.

2009 Successful, Marriott Now Recognizing VTCs

Happy New Year! Hopefully everyone has had the opportunity to see this press release in one of the trades. If you have not, simply click the link at the bottom of this post.

2009 was a great year for the VTC Program, in terms of new participants. We have lots planned for the year and we hope you stay tuned. The first exciting bit of news for the New Year is Marriott's agreement to recognize VTCs and the VTC's ARC Number. In 2009 Marriott conducted a review of a number of travel intermediary channel partners, which included the VTC Program. We are very pleased they concluded that the VTC Program is one of the strongest in the industry and are encouraged to partner with us going forward. VTCs join a short list of accredited entities able to do business with Marriott and can now book and receive commissions, take advantage of Marriott’s industry-leading Hotel Excellence Program, and will have access to Marriott’s Fam-Tastic Rates and Certificates.

So, I strongly suggest that VTCs visit https://www.cprpt.com/ARC/10000/redirect.asp?sid=10474&vid=0&lid=1022878&o=1&rt=1&mk=47602&eid=cflores@arccorp.com today and begin learning how you can take advantage of all of the great opportunities Marriott has to offer. Also, be on the lookout for future Marriott messages and special offers on ARC MarketPlace like this one, which ends on January 22nd - http://www.arcmarketplace.com/marriott_grb.pdf.

PRESS RELEASE - http://www.arccorp.com/news/pr20100105.pdf

What do you want to see from ARC & The VTC Program in 2010?

Tell us what you'd like to see from the VTC program in 2010. We want to know what you like about the program, and areas you’d like to see changed.

Agent’s Choice to Move Behind MyARC Portal

MyARC is the centralized access point for a growing list of ARC tools and resources for our customers. For the VTCs, this list will soon include Agent’s Choice, in addition to IAR which is already behind MyARC. Soon you’ll be able to access Agent’s Choice through MyARC without the requirement of an additional login.

Benefits of MyARC:
• Self-service password resets
• Single sign-on to IAR and Agent’s Choice
• Delegated administrative capabilities such as granting or revoking Agent’s Choice access via simple administrative interface

To take advantage of all the features and benefits MyARC has to offer, we encourage you to have your Agent’s Choice account in active status.

We will send VTCs an e-mail when Agent’s Choice integration behind MyARC is complete.

Please contact ARC’s Customer Care Center at +1 703.816.8003 if you have any other questions about MyARC or Agent’s Choice.

Travel Trade's Cruise-A-Thon

I arrived in NYC yesterday (June 4) morning; just in time to hear Peter Yesawich speak and just in time for the cruise panel afterwards. Both sessions were great and everyone is extremely optimistic given the current economic conditions. Attendance at the show is on the low side, but the agents are extremely engaged.

Travel Trade invited me to speak during this morning's (June 5) general session. I was prepared to speak before Dan Hanrahan, President & CEO of Celebrity/Azamara Cruises and before Andy Stuart, EVP, Global Sales & Passenger Services. But last night I was informed that I would follow these fine gentlemen. What a hard act! Dan is a great speaker, if you haven't heard him before. And Andy is clearly a crowd pleaser. He had stolen a few laughs from the audience, which I had hoped to get from my time. We were running a little over schedule so I had accommodate the fine people in attendance and cut a few minutes short. All-in-all I think everyone appreciated the speakers this morning. I look forward to fielding questions from eager attendees tomorrow afternoon, during the trade show.

Continuing on my welcomed responsibility of creating VTC impressions...

Chris Flores
Product Manager, VTC Program