Marketing Travel in Tough Times - 21/04/2009
Cimtig Seminar news
The Vertical Group are sponsoring the next CIMTIG seminar:
Marketing Travel in Tough Times
After many years of continuous growth, where travel has experienced an unparalleled boom, the cold winds of recession have taken a steely grip on the spending power and confidence of the UK consumer.
This will be the first time many marketers have operated in a recessionary environment for over fifteen years. So how do you manage your campaigns in the very different world we now face? What messages are most likely to succeed? Can a brand thrive or just survive? What are the pitfalls? What are the tips, tactics and strategies that should be deployed for the future?
The event takes place on the 11th May in London at the Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, and London from 6.30-9.30 pm.
The event has attracted a strong list of speakers including:
Simon Hargreaves, managing director of TTA and Worldchoice
Mandy Nickerson, managing director of Bales Worldwide
Tom Allen, ex-managing director of Cadogan Holidays
Professor Moira Clark, director, Henley Business School
The Vertical Groups renowned back office system, TARSC has seen many changes since development in 1983, but the addition of the Athena platform, a fully integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system has made the task of building, maintaining a client database a straightforward task.
The features of a CRM system include extensive profiling including contact details, family details, holiday and travel preferences, previous enquiries and bookings. Having this information allows you to build a rapport with your clients, thereby making the relationship more personal and interactive. A birthday or anniversary card, a quick phone call to advise of a last minute holiday which you know suits their choice of holiday or just a friendly call to catch up can support your customer database in keeping your customers for life. Another feature would be full quote creation in either a manual format or from viewdata produced in either RTF format for printing of PDF format for emailing.
With the support of a CRM system, why would you invest in advertising which is not only expensive but also mainly ineffective with low return on investment, when you can build and create a database from your existing clients with whom you already have relationship at any level?
Peter Healey, CEO of Vertical Group said “We are delighted to support this Cimtig event. Its relevance to our own product development and the topical nature of the subject during our currently challenging times are high priority, and foremost in everyone’s thought is getting good return on marketing investment and value for money. Our Athena platform gives agents the opportunity to be reactive to market trends using their database of clients directly from the system.”
CRM systems support conversion reports, enquiry reports and marketing reports which can confirm return on investment for direct marketing activity and produce reports which support commercial negotiations with suppliers.
CIMTIG is the travel industry group of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the world's largest marketing organisation with some 50,000 members. CIMTIG promotes marketing excellence within travel and provides networking, career and study opportunities to marketing professionals in this exciting and vibrant industry.
For more information on booking to attend this event: WWW.cimtig.org