Umapped & Booking Cruise Shore Excursions with Third Parties
Cruise passengers know how to go with the flow, but when it comes to shore excursions, they’re exploring off-the-beaten-port and avoiding the crowds. Today’s cruise passengers are looking for an experience.
Drawing a focus on small groups, cultural immersion, and stops off-the-beaten-path, third-party shore excursion providers are growing in popularity and becoming the new alternative to ship-sponsored excursions. Third-parties like ShoreTrips and Project Expedition are offering travellers a curated experience, away from the crowds at port. Instead of the big distillery in Puerto Rico, third-party excursions are venturing out a little further to visit some of the smaller rum distilleries. At Dunns River Falls in Jamaica, third-party excursions are timing their visit after the crowds have left.
With shore excursions accounting for a third of a cruise line’s source of revenue, cruise lines don’t plan on missing the boat. They’re getting on board with enhanced experiences at port instead. Seeing the rising demand for curated shore excursions, cruise lines are offering private, customizable cruise excursions, like visiting a home in Jamaica, and behind-the-scenes activities at port in Europe, curated by local experts.
With more options available now than ever, cruise passengers are highly likely to book an excursion on their next vacation. Luckily, Umapped’s Trip Publisher makes it really easy to add third-party shore excursions providers to your Itineraries. Here’s how to navigate.
1. Importing cruise details is really, really easy in Trip Publisher.
If your cruise is part of Umapped’s database, you’ll be able to upload the itinerary in just a few clicks. Once you’ve added the itinerary, the cruise stops will import directly into your Trip as separate Activity segments. Add cruise details here, like your client’s cabin number, deck number, stateroom category, dining preferences, and more. Even if the cruise line doesn’t happen to be in Umapped’s database, manually adding the trip details is also very straightforward.
2. Collaborating with third-party shore excursions providers - whether they’re already in the Umapped database or not, is really, really easy.
Add Collaborators, or third-party shore excursions providers, even if they’re not existing Umapped subscribers. Click on the Share icon and Collaborators will receive an email from Umapped with instructions on how to sign up for a free trial. Once they sign up, they’ll be able to view and edit your Trip. You can remove or adjust access at any time, and keep track of your Collaborator’s edits in the Trip Audit Log.
3. You can now use Templates! So for instance, if you create a Trip for a client that combines a standard cruise itinerary with third-party experiences, you can save that Trip as a Template and have the ability to share it with your colleagues to pitch again. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Save Trips with third-party shore excursions as a Template and save valuable time. If you find yourself creating the same type of Trip, make a Template and reuse it over and over again to create itineraries for your clients. Templates are day-by-day itineraries, much like Trips, but without specific dates. Tag your Templates and organize them by category: Amenities, Destination, Price, Experience, and Trip Type, so you can easily find them again in the future.
4. It's all very easy for your travellers, as well. Rather than getting a whole stack of papers or emails from different travel providers, everything's all in one place and it's easy to keep track of.
With one centralized platform, your clients can easily access all the information they need - flights, cruise details, shore excursions, transfer booking confirmations, and more. Booking numbers and documents are available online and offline.
Umapped is adaptable to the needs of your clients’ cruise vacations. Stay on top of cruise trends and wow your clients with Umapped’s innovative technology.