Headquarter Happenings: Cruise Planners Leverages Artificial Intelligence for Powerful Marketing, Research, and Travel Planning Tools

Cruise Planners put artificial intelligence front and center in a big way at its 2026 CP World annual conference, held half at the Broward County Convention Center and half onboard Star Princess.

“Everyone in every industry is talking about these same two letters,” said Michelle Fee, CEO and founder of Cruise Planners, on day one of the conference. “It’s transforming the world and it’s absolutely going to transform travel planning. The exciting part is that we get to step into this next chapter together.”

The franchise host was one of the first organizations within the travel agency community to embrace A.I., back in 2023 with the launch of MaxxIntelligence. This year, Cruise Planners announced 23 new tools and enhancements, the bulk of which are A.I.-driven. All are included at no extra cost for all franchise owners and their associates, and every one designed to make the day-to-day operations of being a travel advisor simpler, faster, and easier.

“What if you had a magic button that could take hours of work and turn it into minutes?” Fee asked the roughly 1,100 travel advisors in the room. “Today, were’ going to revolutionize the way you all sell travel. A.I. is going to help by identifying that perfect vacation based on your client’s preferences, their budget, their travel histories, and their interests – all without you having to dig through tons of information. And, just like that, you’ve taken control of your time.”

Headlining this year’s tech announcements are two tools that will change the way Cruise Planners market, sell, and plan, travel – Maxx Assist and Maxx Reach.

Maxx Assist — All-in-One Research and Itinerary Builder

Combining travel research, find a cruise, flight, and hotel, and more, Maxx Assist is a conversational A.I. solution that helps travel advisors build a complete vacation itinerary in less time than ever before.

“We’re building technology to amplify the advisor,” added Brian Schultz, Cruise Planner’s chief information officer, added. “The biggest complaint we hear is ‘I’m spending too much time that’s not turning into enough money for me. So, we’re taking those hours and we’re going to turn them into minutes.”

Maxx Assist, which brings together 67 travel partners (primarily preferred parters), is designed to build an itinerary around an already-known element – an already booked cruise, hotel, or tour package, for instance. With that as the basis, Maxx Assist will do all the research to find appropriate flights, accommodations, day tours, insurance, and more.

Not sure what’s missing? Maxx Assist will flag all “gaps” in a client’s booked vacation, so advisors know what they should be focusing on with that particular client.

“The real opportunity is building the complete vacation package: the hotels, the flights, the transfers, the excursions, the insurance. All the details that turn a cruise into a full vacation experience from start to finish,” Schultz said.

“And let’s not forget all that additional commission that goes into your pockets,” he added.

When there is no known element to start with, Maxx Assist can be used to identify the core piece of the vacation first – an Alaska cruise in July, a guided tour to Italy in October, etc. Maxx Assist can simultaneously offer suggestions for all the accompanying pieces or advisors can wait until the main piece is booked and then use Maxx Assist to fill in the gaps.

Using Maxx Assist can be done through a plain language text interface or spoken. Once the process has started, there are plenty of prompts to narrow down or expand the search parameters.

Maxx Assist officially launches the week of Oct. 26, 2026.

Maxx Reach — Free Weekly Leads

Also launching next week is Maxx Reach, a predictive sales intelligence tool that will deliver 15 ranked leads every Monday to travel advisors.

“We know that you have a lot of clients in your database and with the hundreds of promotions, special savings, group pricing, and the thousands of sailings that we have, knowing who to call can be daunting,” Schultz said. “Maxx Reach does all the heavy lifting. It identifies which clients might be ready to travel and provides you with a targeted list of clients to reach out to every week. The right clients matched with the right sailings and the right offers.”

Not only does Maxx Reach supply the list of clients, it includes the reasons why each client was selected, what the specific offer is, and key talking points to start the conversation. With a click of a button, advisors can also send an ecard, create a task to complete later, build a flyer to pass along, or assign it to an associate.

Maxx Reach also assigns a score to the lead, from one to five, ranking the strength of the lead so advisors know which are more likely to turn into a booking.

Maxx Reach will then track the progress of that lead – so long as the advisor reports their actions. The more advisors report back these leads, the smarter Maxx Reach will be in making future recommendations.

“There should never be another moment, where you’re sitting there thinking ‘I’d like to do more sales. I just don’t know what to do,” said Scott Koepf, Cruise Planners’ chief strategy officer.

The leads come directly from an advisor’s database, though they don’t have to be past clients. They simply need to be in their database. Leads are determined by analyzing numerous factors from past travel to promotional offers they’ve clicked on to what loyalty programs they belong to, do they have FCC with a particular cruise line, when have they booked in the past, and much, much more.

Advisors are not limited to the 15 leads. If they work all 15 leads, they can request more.

Beyond providing weekly leads, Maxx Reach can also be used for “quick wins,” tasks that advisors can act on to help build their business. For instance, a client’s future cruise credit will expire soon; an advisor can reach out to that client to remind them that if they don’t use it, they’ll lose it.

Ask Maxx w/Maxx Intelligence — Easy Business Insights

A third highlight of this year’s announcements is Ask Maxx and Maxx Intelligence. Both already exist but new enhancements give the tools a deeper understanding of advisors and their business data.

“We taught Maxx about your clients and your bookings, so now you can have conversations with Maxx about your business data,” said Phill Guerra, senior vice president of technology for Cruise Planners, during a step-by-step demo of some of the new tools.

Advisors can Ask Maxx to help advisors identify business opportunities, determine who their best clients are, discover which associates are underperforming, and more.

With its access to Maxx Intelligence, Ask Maxx essentially replaces the need to run reports with plain language inquiries.

As an example, Guerra offered this prompt, “Please pull a list of clients with birthdays next month, include their email address, their age, and their total spend.”

Genius Agents — a Digital Marketing Workforce

Cruise Planners is also putting A.I. to work on the digital marketing side of things with Genius Agents, a trio of A.I. tools connected to CP Social that help franchise owners strengthen their online presence.

Search Agent: The first of the three A.I. “agents,” the Search Agent can be used to optimize an advisor’s local business listing, including layering SEO and other search visibility requirements.

Reputation Agent: Reputation Agent automatically helps manage online reviews, including auto-responding to posts with an easy ‘thank you,’ or flagging any that require a franchise owner’s personal attention and/or direct response.

Social Agent: This agent creates and publishes personalized, co-branded social media to help advisors maintain a consistent digital presence. Content can be built around a particular group the advisor wants to fill, a destination they’re trying to focus on, or any other theme they can think of.

“They put in all the information. It creates the images, the captions, the videos, everything,” said Cruise Planners’ chief operations officer, Theresa Scalzitti, during a media briefing on day two of the conference.

All three are only available to Cruise Planners advisors paying for the Elite level of CP Social.