New Crystal booking engine, new Viking travel advisor portal

Crystal's booking engine, integrated into crystalcruises.com, has key features including an easy-to-navigate design that simplifies the search and booking process, real-time availability and pricing and personalized recommendations based on clients' preferences and optional back-to-back voyage combinations. Advisors can also access special deals and promotions through the engine.

Crystal's new booking engine makes it easier for travel advisors to sell cruises on Crystal Symphony, here, and Crystal Serenity

'Travel advisors are at the heart of our business, and we are committed to providing them with the best tools and resources available,' said Marett Taylor, chief sales officer, A&K Travel Group. 'Our new booking engine is a testament to our dedication to innovation and excellence. We believe it will significantly enhance the efficiency of our valued travel partners, enabling them to deliver exceptional service to their clients.'

Training and support

Training resources, including webinars, video tutorials and step-by-step guides are available to ease the transition. Advisors also have access to a dedicated support team.

'I am thrilled that Crystal has made the commitment to its travel advisor community by investing in this new booking engine,' said Melissa Araya, VP cruise at Virtuoso. 'With everything we need now right at our fingertips, it will make it easier and more efficient for our travel advisors to deliver exceptional service to their clients.'

The new portal can be used to access Viking's Travel Advisor Academy to learn how to sell river, ocean and expedition voyages. Here, a Viking Longship in Paris

Viking's travel advisor portal

Viking's new travel advisor portal is designed to streamline marketing and enhance the booking experience.

Advisors can access marketing content and assets to build co-branded websites, and the Travel Advisor Academy to learn how to sell Viking’s river, ocean and expedition voyages.

Chairman/CEO Torstein Hagen said travel advisors are one of the reasons for Viking's success, and he touted his company's trade-friendly policies including no NCFs. 'This new and improved portal is the latest step in our effort to be the best business partner for travel advisors,' Hagen said.

New features

Improvements include the abiility to search multiple cruise types with intuitive filters to find itineraries by city, port, month or date range. It's also now possible to search and book qualifying sailings by offer code.

Bookings can be sorted by upcoming payment deadlines with the new booking dashboard. Advisors can search for a booking by client name and filter by booking status. They also can select from all stateroom categories with an interactive room selection.

It's also possible to add Air Plus while making an online booking, avoiding a call to the Viking air department.

And advisors can download a PDF or print a quote for clients.