How Four Top Cruise Planners Advisors Turned Success into Million-Dollar Businesses

At last week’s Cruise Planners CP World conference, founder and CEO Michelle Fee invited four members of the franchise Host’s Millionaire’s Club on stage to talk about some of the best practices that have helped drive their businesses.

The conversations ranged from working with associates to thinking outside of the box to customer service, and beyond.  

Finding Associates/ICs

Most Cruise Planners franchise owners don’t go it alone in their business. Finding quality independent contractors (who Cruise Planners calls associates) is a never-ending challenge and Fee asked the panel how they’ve gone about doing it.

Amy Matthews, an 18-year veteran of Cruise Planners, told the audience she found one of her most successful and trusted associates by running a referral contest – whichever client referred the most clients would win a free cruise. Not only did one client outsell everyone else, she kept in regular touch with Mattews to check on her status and see what she needed to do to ensure she won.

“I was actually the winner, because I got my best associate,” Matthews said.

High school teacher-turned travel advisor Dianna Miller told the audience how wearing her Cruise Planners t-shirt has turned into not just new business, but also new associates. In one case, it led to a conversation while on line for an airplane bathroom with a dog show judge who basically came with a built-in clientele basis. Five years later, this associate will have booked about three-quarters of a million dollars in group departures in 2025.

“You can meet an associate anywhere,” she said.

Debra Thune, who purchased her Cruise Planners franchise right before the COVID-19 pandemic, turned to other franchise owners for a referral – because not every franchise owner wants an associate, or if they do, not more than one or two. Thune, who is also very much an extravert, also said she’s picked up associates just by talking to people she meets.

“Talk to everybody everywhere,” she said.

Associate Management

Switching the conversation to second-generation Cruise Planners franchise owner Melissa Shanks, Fee asked Shanks how she manages her large team of associates.

“When I took over the agency, I realized the value of letting everybody else do the work,” Shanks joked.

Jokes aside, Shanks changed the way her Cruise Planners agency is run, with each associate taking on a specialty and only working with clients on trips that fit that specialty.

“I filter leads to the associate with that specialty and we client share,” she said, explaining further how each client is a client of the agency, not of individual associates. To make it work, associates have to sign contracts. Additionally, not everyone gets the same commission. New associates start out at a lower percentage, which goes up over time.

Doing Business Outside the Box

“You don’t get to the Millionaire Club unless you really do think outside the box and be unique in wherever it is that you do business,” Fee said. “We all sell the same cabins on the same ships, so what makes you standout and that’s where people start thinking outside the box.”

For Matthews, thinking outside the box led her to the creation of once-per-month “Wine-Down Wednesdays” for the local 55+ apartment complex located near her real estate office. (Matthews runs both her Cruise Planners agency and a real estate agency.)

The Wednesday get-togethers are held at her office and were designed for Matthews and her team to get to know the residents specifically to build up a referral business, both for cruise and real estate. Attendance at these events can be as high as 60 people.

“It’s turned into a great thing for us. I’ve had people stand in line to talk to me… about cruising. I’ve got a lot of business out of there.”

The Wine Wednesdays have also led to group cruises, including an upcoming one of 148 people on a five-night cruise out of Jacksonville, Fla.

Above-and-Beyond Customer Service

One way that advisors can set themselves apart from others is through their customer service. Like Matthews, Miller is also courting her local 55+ community, but she does it through her customer service.

For one, she holds regular “unofficial” office hours at a coffee shop near the community, so they can easily find her if they want to talk. She’s even gone so far as to go to their homes to teach them how to pack their suitcases.

“I make them dependent on me for travel,” she said. “It has resulted in a ton of referrals. I get about a million dollars a year out of that neighborhood.”

Trial and Err… Big Rewards

Being successful in business often means trying new things, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. In one of her last questions to the panel, Fee asked: what is something you’ve tried that had a big impact?

For Matthews, it was targeting the 55+ community located across from her real estate office, a decision that did not come without risk. She had to pay more than $5,000 for the exclusive rights to host cruise nights at the complex. Additionally, at a Galentine’s sales event at the community, she offered a $50 off coupon for any travel booked through her agency. It took only three bookings to see a return on her initial investment.  (She’s had well over three bookings as a result of the cruise nights and the coupon.)

Miller partnered with the continuing education division of her local 55+ community, regularly giving travel talks. While she’s not allowed to advertise her services, she is permitted to hand out brochures that have her contact info on them. She started her talks during the COVID-19 pandemic, getting just six people at her first one. Feedback was swift and by her second talk, she had been moved to a larger room because they had more than 40 people signed up to attend. These days, she regularly gets about 80 attendees and always ends up with new bookings. Like Matthews, Miller has also paid to hold cruise nights and even done multiple river cruise expos, with multiple lines participating. All have resulted in multiple bookings.

Thune, who spends most of her year traveling, said making the decision to travel the way her ideal client does has been instrumental in her success. She tries to fly business class whenever possible. She puts herself in the best hotels and higher category rooms. All of this puts her where her ideal clients are – and then she talks to them.

She talks to people sitting in the concierge lounges. She talks to the people in airport lounges. She talks to them on the plane. She’s not shy, not about talking to people and not about telling people what she does for a living, including having an “I Sell Travel” sticker on her laptop so that when she’s working in a lounge or on a plane, the sticker catches people’s attention and gets conversations started.

Setting Serious Aside

While most of the questions Fee asked the panelists were meant to inspire audience members to make tangible changes, she did take an opportunity to lighten things up a bit, asking what was the “less smart” questions you’ve ever been asked.

For Thune, it wasn’t a question that had her shaking her head, but a request: “The day that I get on my flight, I’m getting my hair done, so please make sure you don’t give me a window seat.”

A request also had Miller shaking her head, but left her impressed with Celebrity’s service, who managed to meet every one of her client’s requests, which were: a Thanksgiving dinner in his suite (he’d booked three of the top suites on Celebrity Beyond) with specifically Stovetop Stuffing, canned cranberry sauce and a Star Wars-themed cake.

Shanks might have had the most unusual request. A recently widowed client was nervous about traveling on his own so he asked Shanks to go with him to Disney. She said sure, why not.

“That’s taking service to the next level,” Fee responded.