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WinCruise was originally founded in 1994 as “G’enie Software
Development”, by Jack Hogue and Scott Butler, two young men with
extensive programming and travel knowledge. Developed as in-house group
inventory tracking tool with customer and booking management features
in one of the top Cruise producing agencies in North America – Abracadabra
Cruises in Marietta GA – WinCruise was soon recognized as one of
the only modern customer management systems that was developed specifically
for Cruise and Leisure based agencies. Over the next few years WinCruise
expanded its customer base slowly, being installed in a limited number
of other top producing agencies throughout the US.
In late 1998 the first major upgrade to WinCruise was announced –
WinCruise 98. Expanding on the strengths of the system – namely a
simple yet powerful group, client and booking management tool, WinCruise
98 added many significant features that were requested by the current
users of the product. It was at this time due to increasing demand by
many other leisure travel agencies that the software began to be available
to travel agencies as a whole, and WinCruise Inc was incorporated. Unlike
the systems that existed at the time, primarily GDS or accounting offshoots
that primarily were designed to deal solely with the financial transaction,
WinCruise quickly made a name for itself as a product that could be truly
used to automate the entire agency’s business. During the rest of
the 1990’s WinCruise more than doubled its customer base every single
year, and released WinCruise 2000 in late 1999 – another significant
upgrade over the previous product.
Throughout the early 2000’s WinCruise continued to attract the attention
of some of the largest Cruise & Leisure producers in the travel industry
– agency’s such as Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart, eCruises, Cruise
Connections Canada and the Vacation.Com Cruise Centre among others. It
was at this time that WinCruise also release WinCruise Remote, a product
that, via the Internet, allows large agencies with outside agents grant
access to the same client and booking screens that inside agents use.
With WinCruise Remote, agencies were able to significantly reduce their
related outside agent reservation processing costs.
In October 2002 WinCruise released the most significant new product revision
– WinCruise Professional. This new product incorporated a number
of new features, focused primarily on enhancements to Customer Relationship
and Group Management. Where previously WinCruise was acknowledged to have
the best Group Inventory management system in the industry, WinCruise
Professional took this even further – putting it clearly head-and-shoulders
above any competitive product in the industry today. WinCruise Professional
also allows for new live interfaces to be created – live Cruise bookings
via Amadeus Cruise, Insurance and others.
WinCruise today remains a privately owned company, actively working towards
the “next generation” product building on the strengths of its
close ties to its customers.
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