Tours de Sport's bread and butter has always been its lucrative motor
coach ski weekend getaway division. This division had steadily grown
through its inception, but Tours de Sports' management team wanted to
diversify, so they wouldn't have "all of their eggs in one basket".
Partially due to the ease of shopping and booking travel online, travel
industry analysts have been projecting a slowdown in organized group
travel while forecasting an increase in popularity of individualized
customized vacations.
ResLogic's Travel Reservation System
ResLogic's Internet Reservation Engine
"We wanted to grow our customized FIT ski vacation division, but
we didn't want to take a big risk by hiring a bunch of new reservation
agents to handle the increased volume projected as a result of larger
marketing budget", said Greg Benson, Tours de Sport's Vice President
of Sales and Marketing. Instead of adding head count to their reservation
staff, they installed ResLogic's Internet Reservation Engine in the
fall of 2001.
Exponential Growth
"We couldn't believe it. We doubled our business in the FIT department
that year without hiring any more reservation agents, and we are on
track to double our business again in that division this year. We are
generating an average of 400 online trip quotes per day in our busy
season. We would have needed to hire an additional seven full time reservation
agents handle that volume of business without the Internet Reservation
Engine", explains Benson.
Opt-In Marketing
"We have built a huge "opt-in" blast e-mail database
from the profile information captured during the online trip quote process,
and we are sending a Hot Deals blast e-mail to these opt-in customers
and prospects every two weeks. The results have been phenomenal",
explains Benson.
Customer convenience
Benson continues, "We are also saving a lot of man hours with the
ability of our customers paying their balances online. Even if a customer
books through our call center, they can login later and pay their balances
online. Not only does this save us a ton in overhead, it's a nice convenience
to the customer."
Tours de Sport's ski weekend getaway division is no longer the lion's
share of their business thanks to the growth in their customized FIT
division.
Customers
Company
Profile:
