Just Picture It Now

So, in other words, what you all are doing, is stockpiling your cruise request and booking them all on that one day, as evidenced by this statement: " We are now accepting reservations to be booked between Midnight and Midnight on Thursday, November 8th, for a sailing of your choice with The Most Popular Cruise Line in the World."

You're not taking bookings from ONE day, your taking bookings from SEVERAL days and are going to count them. That is going to give an unrealistic number as to what you and your comrades can do in a one day period. Why stockpile? Why not just do it real, and use only bookings from calls you get from that one day to get your numbers?

Of course, no matter how you do it, the numbers will never be real, because neither YTB or CCL will release the "real" number of bookings made on that day.

I’m sorry John, please read the Modern Agent article again concerning The World’s Largest Cruise Night done on October 17th.

What we are doing is very similar to what CLIA had done last month. The difference is that we are one company, YTB and we are doing it with one cruise line, Carnival, and we are also doing compiling these bookings in half the time. (2 weeks instead of a month long promotion like CLIA did.)

Clearly, the Retail Agents had their shot at this with all cruise lines…Now it’s OUR turn with just one.

And you can bet your bottom dollar both YTB and Carnival will release these numbers.

Thank you.

Then why are you promoting it as ONE DAY? If it truly is ONE DAY, then it should be ONE DAY. If you're doing it over 2 weeks, then advertise it in your blog that way, and on your website.

John;

Carnival has promoted “One Day Sales” this way for years. It’s nothing new and it’s nothing special for YTB only. When I was simply a customer, I would get e-mails and snail mails from Carnival promoting this “One Day Sale” or “Special”.

In fact, as an active registrant of CruisingPower.com, I know RCCL was running a couple “One Day Sales” just last week.

Royal Caribbean International® presents the latest Sales Event specials. These offers are special rates for upcoming cruises with limited availability. Only a selection of staterooms are available, and these rates must be booked on Tuesday, 10/30/2007. Take a look at the great cruise deals listed here and make your plans for a terrific cruise.

Like I’ve expressed and documented here before, CLIA promoted “The World’s Largest Cruise Night” the entire month of October.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Get over it.

Doug,

I can totally get the comparison you're trying to make, however, YTB and CCL are the ones that have made this a thing about "look at how much we can do on ONE day". CLIA never tried to make it only about one day like you guys are.

Cruise night came about as a way to try and make the public aware of cruising, and how much fun it is, blah, blah, blah (BTW, I hate cruising, and refuse to sell cruises). It was never intended as a "Let's show them what we can do" type thing as your ONE day sale is. When all is said and done, and YTB and CCL release, if they do, numbers regarding number of cabins sold and dollar amounts, it will not be an apple to apple comparison. The only numbers that I, and a majority of my collegues, will take as valid, are the number of cabins and dollar amounts from request made on November 8, and no other day.

John;

If the documentation I’ve provided has eluded you, let me see if I can help.

The Cruise Lines International Association said its Oct. 17 World's Largest Cruise Night (WLCN) is expected to generate 17,852 bookings, which translate into an estimated $22.3 million in sales and more than $3 million in travel agency commissions.

We are well aware of what you and your colleges “think”. Honestly, from what I’ve seen and read, (from the very thread you started on Travel Weekly) it’s clear you and your colleges don’t have even a basic understanding of our model or what we are trying to do.

If you’d like an “average”, my documentation here has provided that for you.

60% of Carnival’s Agencies books less than 10 cabins per year. YTB currently books over 200 cabins per day with Carnival. It has been documented here that YTB currently has 58,739 cabins booked with Carnival, and Royal Caribbean has $13.5 Million on the books with them. (Carnival reports by cabins and RCCL reports dollar volume.) No sales, no specials, just average bookings by a bunch of untrained, unqualified, unregulated Yahoo’s who collectively has earned Carnival’s Pinnacle Award each of the last three years. (2005, 2006, and 2007)

Carnival obviously want’s to fill their ships with passengers and we’ll have to wait and see just how many cabins we can fill with passengers on November 8th.

We are esitmating it will be more than 17,852.

LMAO!

I’ve got to hand it to you Doug. Can’t argue with how well you’ve been able to document everything.

I’ve only been with YTB for two months, and Thursday will be my first cruise booking. (Possibly bookings!) It has been a very valuable learning experience for me and I’ve come to realize, it’s not that hard once you know what to ask and what information you need. I’ve always learned better by doing anyway. The documentation like the client profile forums, the training calls in the back office, and the entire page of resources directly from Carnival (and others) gives us step by step instructions makes it easy!

I would imagine there are many more with YTB that are just like me, and this Royal Caribbean ordeal has really been the best thing that could have happened to me personally when it comes to getting serious about my travel business. It’s really not that hard to get people interested in taking a cruise. I’ve been on several and I love them.

Thanks for the great posts and documentation. I’ve learned a lot from you. Keep up the good work and let’s kick some tail on Thursday!

60% of Carnival’s Agencies books less than 10 cabins per year. YTB currently books over 200 cabins per day with Carnival.

But using this figure, 100% of YTB agencies (106K) book less than one cabin per year.

200 Cabins Per Day
X 365 Days
= 73,000 Cabins

73,000 Cabins
/ 106,000 RTAs
= .689 Cabins per agency per year.

Also, if YTB is booking 73,000 cruises with Carnival per year, that will equate to a MINIMUM of $73M in sales (Is $1000/cabin a reasonable average?)

John
(the other one)

But, will that more than 17,852 cabins be from request made on ONE day as you keep advertising the sale is for, or an accumulation of request from the past 2 weeks?

See, I wouldn't have a problem if you and your blog and websites didn't emphasize the ONE day aspect, when in actuality it isn't ONE day, but 2 weeks. Yes, it may be a matter of semantics, but in this case, semantics matter most of all.

We'll never see eye to eye on the subject, but I do at least thank you for being open to having an adult dialogue about it, which is truly more than I can say of some of your brethren. While I don't agree with your methods, I do wish you well with all your endouvers.

Thank you John.

The Leadership of YTB has asked us not to throw mud. I am well aware of how some of our members “think they know” a better way of dealing with all this.

For me, there really is no need be childish. I know this model works, as I've lived it, experienced it, and am working this business full time. I know far more about our business model than most. My goal here is to educate everyone about who we are and what we are truly here to do. (That includes some of our own members as well.)

I've been in the industry for a number of years. I certainly didn't have this knowledge on day one or year one. When you don’t have the documentation and experience I have, all you have most of the time is “words”.

We have over 60,000 RTA’s who are less than 10 months old with our company right now.

The other John;

You make a valid point. I would consider from what I’ve seen not only from myself but my team, $1400 is a more accurate number. ($700 per person.)

YTB currently has over 60,000 RTA’s who have less than 10 months of experience or less. (59K as of December 31) I personally didn’t sell my first cruise to a client until I was 6 months in. We have a substantial amount of inexperience out in the field right now. (Just in case THAT point isn’t evident!)

Oddly enough, what Royal Caribbean has done has actually helped the field learn more about the cruise industry. Carnival has stepped up to the plate and offered us the help and support we need in order to get better at selling this service. (Vince eluded to just how much above.) This training and support has always been there, it’s just more of a focus of ours because of what Royal Caribbean has done.

Now leave me alone! My Steelers are playing tonight!

Don’t mess with my Steelers!

You call that playing? Hell, it is like a cat toying with a mouse! How embarrassing for the Ravens! 28-0 with 4 left in the 2nd!
Geaux Saints!

Hello. I actually work for a major consolidator. Our complaint against YTB has very little to do with Card Mills and MLMs. We actually deal with home based travel agents on a daily basis and encourage people who do not utilize IATA numbers to sign up with us. However, what we have noticed is that the YTB agents who call us have no interest in learning the rules of the airline tickets, no interest in abiding by the rules of air travel or consolidator contracts and no interest in abiding by the office policies of this office.

We have YTB agents who call us to ask us what a City Code is, what KLM means, where Budacrest is (yeah, that one threw us, too) and one actually asked what country Paris was in. The time we have to take to train the agents is actually not worth the money we are not making on them.

We don't mind selling to YTB, we just wish they would do a little research or training prior to calling us. We are not asking that agents know what itinerary they want exactly, we would like them to know where Monrovia is before they attempt to sell it.

Andrew;

I understand and completely agree that some of our RTA’s need to be better informed. What both you and the RTA’s that call in don’t realize is that we have training modules and archived calls in our back office to help with many of the important issues you are having. There is a Consolidator in Texas who has done several calls for us and it’s extreamly informative. Many of the consolitator sites I’ve seen also have their own training available, even if we didn’t.

I can appreciate how frustrating it is when speaking with someone who doesn’t have even the basics down. I was a Regional Trainer in a former life in the Security and Automation Industry. My job was to educate and train those looking to capitilize on low voltage products going into residential homes. (Security, Phone, TV, Audio, Networking) I was often left holding the bag when a contractor compelety missed wiring the front door, or forgot to pull a phone line to the security system. A contractors idea of “Structured Wiring” was stripping the wire back and using a .25 cent wire nut for phone service. (It worked, but wasn’t up to code.) Nor did many of them realize that the large buzzing coming out of the speakers was because the audio wire was running parrellel to a 220 electrical line.

With new blood, there is a large learning curve. With the new E-Campus Training we have, the recorded calls, and other trainings done by Consolidators like yourself, the dead wood will weeded out and you’ll see far more professional and effective communication from YTB RTA’s.

Thank You.

I do understand your point, I think we get very frustrated because the types of calls we are getting from YTB agents simply cost us more than our markup.

As an example, we had a YTB agent who was so demeaning and rude that we refuse to do business with her. When I called the YTB number to ask about action we can take to report how extremely unprofessional she was, I was referred to "legalsupport@ytb.com". Growing fast is great for a business, I just hope YTB is not growing so fast that it cannot keep up with itself. Training and accountability are extremely important in this industry.

"Training and accountability are extremely important in this industry."

Agree 100% and I can assure you, we are doing everything we can to make this a reality. I'm being told of suppliers who have come forward to do specialized trainings, and while I'm unaware of any Consolidators at this point, there may be one out there that has stepped up.

I appreciate you're comments and I hope the others read and learn from your experience.

I hope so, too - cause when I was a Retail Agent, it was up to my company to train me, not the vendors. That is actually how it should be.

Is the training required? Any time I ask a YTB agent they say it is recommended but they don't have to train at all. Are they mistaken?

Trust me, I understand that it only takes 1 person to put a bad taste in someone's mouth and that there may be a ton of well trained YTB agents. It could be our market, it could just be the people that chose to use us, but it does get tiring.

As an Independent Representative of the company it’s difficult to make sweeping requirements like the one you are talking about. This isn’t a "job" Andrew, it’s a "business".

We did find a little gold nugget however from the last major hurdle we had to overcome earlier this year. California passed legislation on January 1 to eliminate any type of “Travel Agent” credentials to be handed out. Because YTB was able to produce sufficient evidence in court that our California RTA’s DO produce travel sales, we were able to offer classes and testing for CLIA Credentials once they produced $2500 in sales. (None of it could be their own.)

This in turn produced even more travel sales and California now has one of the highest accreditation and training in the entire country from what I’ve been told.

Apparently something is working right, as we are now making this company wide January 1 of 2008.

It’s far too easy to “pass the buck”, and I understand that you don’t think it’s your responsibility. I’ve never understood that mindset. As a Representative in other industries, I know my knowledge and experience about my particular product and efforts in education and training always produced significant results in the form of sales returned to myself and my company. That’s part of the reason I’m doing THIS right now. Is it my responsibility to inform and help everyone understand both sides?

Maybe not.

But I tell you what; because I have, there are a lot more YTB Agents out there that realize we need to take our travel sales and training to the next level. It’s time for this baby to grow up and mature.

Thanks again for input. I sincerely appreciate it.

So how did the sale go?