Softvoyage Sailing Into New Territory

Softvoyage is expanding into the cruise market with a new cruise booking engine scheduled to launch in the fall with Carnival Cruise Lines and MSC Cruises already onboard.

Negotiations are also in the works with Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line.

By connecting directly to the cruise lines’ reservation systems, Softvoyage intends to enrich its cruise content and augment the number of cruise offers available for Canadian tour operators and travel agents using SIREV, and to online travel agencies using the company’s business-to-consumer e-commerce solutions.

Softvoyage CEO Steve Ringuet said this is a significant investment for the company, but noted the time is right.

“There are well over two million Canadians who have been on one or more cruise trips during the past three years, according to a report from the Conference Board of Canada. As Canadian travellers seek different experiences, that number has more than doubled over the last 10 years and is expected to continue to grow significantly,” he said.

Dan Langevin, vice-president of sales and marketing for Softvoyage, told PressToday that agents are looking for a one-stop shop and this initiative will give them just that.

“We’ll display all available cruise happenings with just one click,” he said. “Everything that is available on a certain date from a certain port of call.”

He added that agents will also be able to combine cruise and air bookings, as well as pre-book excursions for their clients.
All SIREV key features will be included in the Cruise module, such as single sign-on, mark-ups/discounts, Personalized Brochure, TripBook, merge-backs, etc.