With locations in more than 100 countries and as the global traveler continues to evolve, Starwood Hotels & Resorts continues to expand its footprint in the destinations you sell and your clients love. To support this growth, Starwood is also expanding its resources for travel professionals.
Fourteen destination modules are now available to StarwoodPros. Access to these destination modules is exclusive to StarwoodPro Loyalty & Brands module graduates. These valuable resources help Starwood’s best sellers better understand the destinations their clients want to explore.
The most recent additions to the destination modules explore three incredible cities including Panama City, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. These modules provide an immersion into the culture, local cuisine and stunning landscapes for each of these three key cities. It offers the traditional Starwood story selling techniques to help bring the destination to life for potential travelers.
Buenos Aires is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Latin America and the largest city in Argentina. A panorama of Panama City, from modern skyscrapers to colonial buildings, including the Panama Canal, Panama Viejo and old part of town, are all explored in the Panama City immersion. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, also known as the “Marvelous” city, is the focus of the third new module. This immersion highlights the home to the most famous carnival in the world, amazing beaches, and host to the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“With the incredible growth of leisure and business travel opportunities in Central and South America, and Starwood’s continued leadership position in hospitality, we felt it critical to share the highlights of these important cities with our StarwoodPro community,” says Chris Austin, v.p., global retail leisure & luxury sales at Starwood.
Existing ProLearning destination modules have already been viewed by thousands of current StarwoodPros. Destinations available include the newly launched Thailand Resorts, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, The Maldives, Fiji, Bali, Hainan Island, China and Macau. Each module can be explored one destination at a time and travel professionals can return to their last completed section at any time. Certificates are provided for each module and a virtual concierge with additional resources is available once logged in to StarwoodPro. Additional destinations will debut throughout the year.
Starwood has also recently added a new core module on upselling to the ProLearning multimedia library of trainings. The Upselling module, which focuses on increasing loyalty and profits from clients, was filmed at The St. Regis New York and captures the discussion and idea sharing session between Starwood’s Chris Austin and leading travel professional industry trainer Stuart Cohen.
“As the world’s largest luxury hotel operator, it only makes sense that Starwood create a module on upselling opportunities for our travel professional partners. We truly want travel professionals to grow their business with us and increase their profits by highlighting the specific areas where we know Starwood can deliver upselling opportunities, resulting in increased profits and loyalty from their clients,” says Austin. “And what better place to host this discussion than at the iconic St. Regis New York. It is an aspirational address, and aspiration is a big part of upselling.”
More than 40,000 travel professionals have completed ProLearning’s Loyalty & Brands module and are now qualified for STARPRO travel professional rates, bookable at starwoodpro.com and starting from just $69 a night. Travel professionals must be a StarwoodPro Loyalty & Brands graduate to gain access to the exciting new Starwood Destinations modules and other exclusive benefits.
If you are not yet a StarwoodPro, join your fellow colleagues and visit starwoodpro.com today.
