Achieving the maximum sales benefit from your consortia program participation is dependent upon loading your CCRA rates so agents can find them in the GDS. We interviewed our seasoned agents and customer service staff members about their GDS experiences. Here are their tips to help you gain the best GDS results:

Advertise Best Available Rates
If you are a BAR participating company, the recommended description to use in the GDS for your CCRA rate is "CCRA Best Available Rate."

Block Space
Don't neglect to use the Block Space offering that is popular with agents. For our corporate travel agency membership, demand for block space reservations has increased. To receive the corporate group bookings, simply notify your reservations staff upon closing the GDS (sold-out status) that "CCRA Block Space is in effect."

Amenities
You can load added value amenities under the CCRA Rate Code. Travelers are looking for value, and travel agents will book based on added value amenities.Two popular amenities that draw bookings are breakfast included and free Internet. When you make these services known in the GDS, you win big.  You can build agency loyalty, higher ADRs, and satisfied guests.

Promotions and Special Packages
Create specific rate codes to identify your promotions. Make it easy for agents to find and book the promotion, without questions. Your automation department can load the special rate under Package (PKG) or Promotional (PRO). Travel agents using the GDS system use the PKG or PRO entries to locate special rates. In addition, to have these rates display with all the room types available, give the room rate code a unique designator. For example, if you advertise a “Spring Special” with 15% off Best Available Rates, then load the words Spring Special into the rate: NKPRO Spring Special – Non Smoking King Room. A travel agent will know that they have found the correct advertised rate.

SI Field
Create tracking for your promotions by instructing travel agents to enter a promotion code into the Special Information (SI) field. Keep in mind that the SI field is limited in the number of characters, and won’t include symbols.

Guest Services
In addition to loading your CCRA Rate code with amenities in all four GDS systems, make certain that your Guest Services team understands what CCRA International is and the sales support that CCRA brings to your hotel.  Agents book the CCRA rate code for leisure and business clients, who are likely to be frequent travelers, often a member of your loyalty program. If the travelers are satisfied, the CCRA agent will keep sending more clients to your hotel.

Staff Training
The more information shared with your Sales and Reservations staff, the better. Visit with a travel agent to see first hand how your rates are displayed. Or click here for GDS Instructions to share.

CCRA Quality Assurance Reminder
CCRA is proud to promote our hotel rate program to our travel agency members. To assure they can access our partner hotel rates, we contract with a team of Call Center Services agents to audit GDS inventories daily. Please don't wait for our notification to upload your rates. We want to support your sales success, and make sure you don’t miss a day of CCRA sales.

World Religious Travel Association (WRTA) partnered with CCRA International this month with efforts to promote both faith-based travel and the CCRA Hotel Program to travel agents. This exclusive partnership is geared towards educating CCRA members about the booming $18 billion faith tourism industry and how to use CCRA Hotels when booking these faith-based trips.

Destinations such as Israel and Jordan are experiencing record growth in 2008. With one in four Americans interested in faith vacations, church and religious group travel is growing at double the rate of the overall tourism industry. WRTA predicts 2009 to be the year of faith tourism, and CCRA is looking forward to being the preferred hotel supplier to travel agents booking religious trips.

“On behalf of the WRTA, we are honored and thrilled with our new partnership with CCRA International,” said Kevin J. Wright, WRTA President, “We look forward to working together on a variety of projects and endeavors – and above all, we look forward to assisting CCRA members and agencies in growing their respective businesses and clientele base through the burgeoning faith tourism marketplace.”

To kick off this partnership, CCRA and WRTA co-hosted an online webinar to introduce faith tourism to CCRA agents. The webinar was presented by WRTA President, Kevin T. Wright and President of Christian Travel Finder, Honnie Korngold. The webinar gave a brief presentation on how to capitalize the faith tourism market. Nearly 1,500 agents were registered for the event, and we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. Agents expressed their appreciation for the information they received, and their optimism for selling faith-based trips in the future.

In October CCRA will be present at the WRTA Expo in Orlando, Florida, to promote and educate faith travel experts on the CCRA Hotel Program.

CCRA International was happy to return this year to ASTA’s THETRADESHOW, Travel Retailing and Destination Expo, in Orlando, Florida. The focus was on learning about new products and getting an education on new tools and resources to support them.

As the preferred Hotel Program Supplier to ASTA members, CCRA presented the features and benefits of the CCRAtravel.com hotel booking portal to agents. Patti Free, VP of Global Membership Services, and Nancy Freigher, CCRA Account Manager for ASTA, conducted a hotel booking seminar for ASTA travel agents, and presented custom group trainings within the three-day trade show setting.

“We were excited to introduce our newest version of our CCRAtravel.com Hotel Booking Portal this month. The newest feature agents were most excited about is the ability to book up to eight rooms at once,” said Patti Free.

ASTA reports that this year’s event drew over 2,000 registered attendees in spite of the threat of storms produced by Hurricane Ike. The attendees were serious-minded professionals interested in growing their travel business. There was a refreshing mix of new agents sprinkled in the mix of experienced agents, all of whom are primarily home-based.

One of the highlights of the conference was the Advocacy Dinner that spoke to the many successes of ASTA in protecting the rights of the travel agent. The new president and board were introduced and the out going president, Cheryl Hudak, was honored for her dedication and all her contributions to ASTA.

After a brief hiatus, Jolene Volkart has returned to the travel industry and joined the CCRA Supplier Strategies team.  She comes to us after spending seven years with THOR, where she began as Director of the Preferred Vendor Program. Jolene then transitioned to the THOR Hotel Program where she worked closely with both chain contacts and individual property contacts.  She is very excited to be back in the industry and the CCRA team is happy to have her on board!

Jolene will be playing an integral role in ensuring the rate integrity of the CCRA International Hotel and Travel Partner program. She will also be working to make sure that our 22,000 agencies are taking advantage of the benefits of the program and are supporting our preferred suppliers. She will act as an extension of the sales team, educating individual hotels on the booking power of our agencies and the value of the marketing programs our suppliers make available to them as a participant in the CCRA program.

Welcome aboard, Jolene!

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