World Travel Holdings (WTH), the CruiseOne/CruisesInc people we talked about a lot last year, announced a partnership with low-fare Spirit Airlines this week to provide Spirit air customers with access to cruise vacations too.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Spirit Airlines to expand their portfolio of travel offerings to their customers,” said Jeff Tolkin, Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of WTH. “Cruising is one of the best values in travel and we look forward to working with Spirit to make this program a success!”
The new Spirit Cruises features “discounts of up to 75% and limited-time bonus offers”, WTH said in a press release adding “Additionally, consumers will have the ability to opt-in to receive special cruise deals via email, showcasing the best values on the market.” On top of that, Spirit Air frequent flyers will earn a standard 10,000 bonus miles per cruise booking with an additional 5,000 mile bonus for a limited time.
We were impressed with World Travel Holdings and their leadership at the CruisesInc/CruiseOne national conference last year aboard Royal Caribbean‘s Allure of the Seas. Their keen focus on developing business relationships of travel agents with clients was refreshing to see. Now, we learn that World Travel Holdings seems to have all the bases covered, drawing on their intense experience in the marketplace to provide a diverse suite of services to travelers.
“World Travel Holdings, through three powerful channels of distribution, is able to provide a full scope of products and services to meet the unique demands and preferences of every kind of traveler”said Tolkin in an email response, adding “By building strategic partnerships and providing customers with the skill and guidance of the most passionate, trusted experts in the travel industry, WTH is positioned to offer leisure travelers a lifetime of remarkable vacation experiences.”
World Travel Holdings has three distinct channels of distribution
- Direct to Consumer (D2C) or House Brands including CruisesOnly, (1-800-CRUISES), Cruises.com and several others.
- Partner Brands handle most of the major airlines and many other companies’ cruise sales. Brands such as BJ’s Wholesale Club, Priceline.com, Orbitz, Delta Airlines, American Airlines, United/Continental Airlines, Jet Blue and now Spirit Airlines, among others.
- Homebased Brands are CruiseOne and Cruises Inc. CruiseOne and Cruises Inc. are franchise and independent agent models, respectively, which together comprise the largest home-based cruise distributor in the United States.
“The power of World Travel Holdings is that consumers can book travel through the channel of their choice, whether online, through a partner like Spirit Airlines, or through one of our travel agents across the United States,” said Tolkin.
With all these options, they really make it easy. Far easier than booking travel was years ago.
Flickr photo by 4Neus
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