This year, ASTA’s Travel Retailing & Destination Expo (Los Angeles, Sept. 7-9) will offer attendees the opportunity to develop a sustainable profit line while earning CLIA credits during sessions that will not only teach them clever ways to close a sale, but also how to turn clients into repeat loyal customers.

“Thanks to an exceptional range of educational sessions, attendees of ASTA’s Travel Retailing & Destination Expo will return home equipped with fresh, new skills, as well as time-tested marketing ideas that will translate into higher profits,” said ASTA President and Chair Nina Meyer. “ASTA and CLIA have again joined forces to bring agents the very best in cruise education with the opportunity to attend CLIA sessions and earn more than 10 certification hours on the CLIA Institute Track.”

This year, attendees interested in furthering their cruise knowledge and certification credits
can choose from:

• CLIA Certification Credit - Building Client Loyalty. (Sept. 8, 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.) This program will show attendees how to: generate loyalty among their customers, uncover hidden client needs, apply quality service and implement 10 fundamentals to building and maintaining client loyalty. After attending this session, agents will have a better understanding of what kind of tools and ideas create customer loyalty for the short- and long-term, better understand the needs of clients over the long term and how best to meet them and be able to implement a customer retention program applying the principles covered in this workshop.

• CLIA Certification Credit - Clever Ways To Close The Sale. (Sept. 9, 8 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.) This CLIA seminar will clarify the mindset travel agents need to make closing as something they do for clients, not to them. And it will reveal dozens of closing strategies – some tried and true, others very much “out of the box” – that can make attendees “close-that-sale” experts. Participants will leave this session understanding how to better integrate the close more effectively into the selling process and with not only a better idea of which closing strategies work in specific situations but with a wider repertoire of closing strategies and approaches.