ADVERTISING FEATURE
VERTICAL SYSTEMS HAILS NEW CRUISE PRODUCT
Vertical Systems is undergoing a major rebrand following the introduction of a cruise-focused product to its agent-facing portfolio. The brainchild of the company behind the award-winning Tarsc software, vCruise is a one-stop shop for advanced cruise search. With information including itineraries, dining options and facilities, along with live pricing and cabin availability, vCruise can be used in both B2B and B2C environments as a white-label option. Here, Chris North, the company’s managing director, explains why he feels the time is right for agents to embrace vCruise, and what’s next for Vertical Systems.
Chris North: ‘The time-saving that vCruise offers to the agent is huge’
Q: Why did you decide to launch vCruise? A: In our search platform, agents can access flights, hotels and transfers, but there was no cruise offering in there. It was traditionally a market Vertical wasn’t even in. We’ve got the ability to plug the cruise search into our platform – and that enhances the products that we have. I know most agents want to be in the cruise market, but it isn’t always very easy for them to get into it. You’ve got some key players in the sector, but for your everyday travel agency or homeworker, it can feel unreachable. If we give them a platform that’s affordable, it can throw them straight into that market.
Q: What are the main USPs of the new vCruise system? A: We have a function within vCruise, called vContent, so we feed all the content in from the cruise lines, including itineraries, ship descriptions, route descriptions, facilities and so on, but we have a
facility where the travel agency can rewrite that content. vContent allows agents to go into a content management system and amend and add to the content that’s fed in by the cruise line. If they’ve been on the ship or a specific cruise themselves, they might give a more personal write-up. If the details of the itinerary are a bit light for one of the days, they may want to add more content to that. That is a nice selling point.
Q: How are you making this product accessible to travel agents? A: We want to make this available as a white-label solution for agents who might be doing business in a slightly different way or engaging with a different audience. For example, a homeworker working in one of the major agency groups or consortia may have a really good following on Facebook, so providing they have over 2,000 likes on Facebook, we can offer
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travelweekly.co.uk 25 October 2018
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