SINCE the revamp of the North American Saint Lucia Expert program in the first quarter of 2018, Saint Lucia has experienced a tremendous growth in its selling power adding over 900 new registrants and 672 new SLEx graduates.
The new program, with its three-tier system, awards the top producing travel agents and their agencies based on room nights sold with monthly cash prizes for the agent and marketing credit for the agency.
Another development within the new SLEx program is its official translation into French and Spanish.
“Having the SLEx program translated into French for our Quebec-based agents is huge since there are over 1500 travel agencies in the province of Quebec,” said Rod Hanna, SLTA’s Sales Manager – Trade, Canada.
“Many indicate that the only reason they are not SLEx agents is due to the lack of information in their native language,” Hanna added.
The partnership to provide the translated program also extends to all collateral material, press releases and industry updates marking another key development in the SLTA marketing strategy.
The program is run through industry leader Recommend.com and features a host of multimedia tools offering an engaging learning experience to travel agents while providing them with exclusive access to key destination information and updates.
“We are truly excited about the new format and are elated with its rate of adoption,” stated Richard Moss, SLTA Sales Manager – Trade USA.
“SLEx is building a competent, powerful salesforce which we, at the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority, are proud to have to spread the word about the beauty and diversity of our destination.”
The SLEx program has also become a powerful call to action as the SLTA continues its marketplace advancement strategy throughout North America.
With every sales call made by marketing agents and at every trade show attended by the SLTA, travel agents are encouraged to become SLEx-certified.
The recruitment push has yielded increasing numbers of agents signing up for the program followed by an increase in bookings to the destination.
“North America continues to be our largest market and we are seeing the rewards from all our marketing efforts as we continue to experience increased stay-over and cruise arrivals, with strong forward bookings, reported.
“We believe that well-informed agents are best able to match their client’s needs to the ideal product. We are pleased to see more travel agents and visitors are selecting Saint Lucia as their destination of choice,” stated Tiffany Howard, Acting CEO of the SLTA.
The Saint Lucia Tourism Authority encourages all travel agents to ‘Gain the Expertise, Earn the Benefits’ with our Saint Lucia Expert program (SLEx) by signing up here: http://edu.recommend.com/saintlucia.