The Fitness Pro Travel site will be down starting at 6pm Pacific tonight until sometime Monday morning.

Similar but Different

While we’ve been talking about these changes for the past two months, I am certain there will be some that will be caught by surprise.  That will likely make next week a busy week of answering questions.

For those of you who have taken the time to read through some of these recent blog posts, I hope that the transition is relatively simple…. I’ve added several links to the bottom of this post for you to reference if you want to look back at all of those sneak peak statements while the site is shut down for a couple days.

Final Site Update:

If you looked close enough to the above image you might have noticed the slight change in the look of the Fitness Pro Travel site.  This image change reflects a slight change in agreement on the areas that Fit Bodies and Fit Launch work together for various elements of the community. To you, the end user, functional procedures for your community and travel experience will be very similar.

Fit Bodies, Inc. will become the domain owner of fitnessprotravel.com and therefore we are updating the site to better reflect their presence and program within the site.

The community will run on FIT Launch’s Community Commerce Cart and Fit Bodies and FIT Launch will work together to service the many aspects and benefits that come with being part of this community.

I’ve covered quite a bit over the past two months.  I hope you’re excited for the slight yet significant functional improvements in coming this next week.  Your patience as we work out any kinks is appreciated.

Checkout these posts for various aspects of the changes to the Fitness Pro Travel website.

• A New Fitness Platform
• Fit Pro Details
• Booking A Resort Fitness Teaching Vacation
• Sorting Hat of Fit Pro Vacations
• Red Warning Pop Ups
• Updating Fit Travel Tutorials
• Sharing Your Fitness Content

Still here and reading?  I just talked with Suzelle a few minutes ago. We wanted to come up with something to assist in easing the growing pains with operating a brand new system/website… Because their will likely be hiccups that you the user will find and ideally pass on to us to fix (in a friendly manor), she want to provide a small discount code you may use if you like to thank you for your patience and your assistance.

Watch for Monday’s email for details.

We’ve covered the methods for updating your fitness professional profile at Fit Pro Travel.  We then covered the various ways to search and select the location for your teaching vacation at a tropical Caribbean resort that best fits you and your guests preferences.

Today, lets cover your booking process…

First, know that when you utilize the Fit Bodies teaching vacation programs, don’t wait for them to call you.  You’re account has been reviewed and its up to you to review the travel opportunity options and follow that up with adding specific dates to your cart for your own fitness teaching vacation.

Second, recall that if you can navigate to the booking page (the one with “add to cart”) your account is approved to book any available dates from the drop down date menu.

Within the new Fitness Pro Travel platform the booking process is very much the same as it is currently.  There are two significant differences:

1. As mentioned in a previous post, Basic Accounts (free accounts) will only be able to access 15 potential teaching vacation locations.  All good, but you will be limited beyond what your specific specialty qualifications allow you to access.
2. You will now designate from a second drop down menu on each travel product which specialty you will be traveling as.  Several resorts provide “either/or” options for the types of skills the pro must posses to utilize the program at their location.

As an example – you may have both ‘group fitness instructor’ and ‘yoga instructor’ as qualified positions for your account.  You may come to a product that offers the travel opportunity to group fitness OR yoga OR personal trainer.  You would be able to designate any of those three as the specialty you would be traveling under.

• group fitness would be fine, and you would have just designated this as your primary specialty to be utilized on your exchange trip
• yoga instructor would be fine, and you would have just designated this as your primary specialty to be utilized on your exchange trip
• But – it would be wrong to designate personal trainer as you do not have that specialty approved in this example.  in the end fit bodies would catch that error as would the resort eventually on arrival, but all in all it will be much easier if you carefully and appropriately select the specialty type you will be traveling under. (you do have to designate at booking).

You’ll pretty much be able to do as you’ve always done in the actual booking process with only those few tweaks…. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Image via Wikipedia

I was thinking today of adding another topic for those of you following along to keep you in the know for upcoming Fitness Pro Travel site.  There are many small changes you will see right away, several others you won’t notice at all, and still more to follow up shortly thereafter.

What sent a small chill down my neck was the fact that I need to update the entire fit travel tutorial series.

It’s not a huge deal, but will take some time.  I will send out another link for all who went through it the first time so that you have an opportunity to run through it once again and catch all the fine details of the site changes.

Separate of that and more an issue of appearance than function is the change to the top logo branding of the site.  Really, the prime advertising spot.  We, FIT Launch built this

community for the many benefits of the fitness professional, but we also built it with the concept of fitting perfectly with the offering of the

Fit Bodies, Inc. travel program.

Picture of the Month - Oct 2011

The majority of fitness professionals utilizing the site do so with the primary or a very near secondary intent of taking advantage of that program…. To better reflect that we simply are branding the site better reflecting our respective roles.

Instead of FIT Launch’s Fitness Pro Travel Community consigning the Fit Bodies Inc travel program; We are putting Fit Bodies front and center in the logo spot and simply noting to the side and bottom border that their opportunities are being offered within a FIT Launch Community.

No service changes to the user accept that we believe it may be a bit less confusing to new members.  Ultimately, we intend for it to be a part of providing the fitness professional outstanding service.

Are you one of those who had confusion over the travel program in the past? Do you think this might keep it a bit more clear when traveling that you are utilizing the Fit Bodies program?

….. Now, off to Fit Beach and we’ll talk more about what the new system will do to the Free vs. Premium accounts in the near future….

Related articles

• Your Fitness Specialty at FPT (fitprobiz.com)
• Sharing Your Fitness Content (fitprobiz.com)
• Search-Research-Book: How to (fitprobiz.com)

You’ll go to module 1 of the Fit Pro Community tutorial.  It’s all about finding things including finding and booking the Fit Bodies Teaching Vacation Opportunities… If you want to sign in for the full tutorial, login to your Fit Pro account and look to the lower end of the right border to sign yourself in.

There are two aspects to the available specialties.  When creating your account, as before, you can check one or more of 15+ fitness specialty formats.  For being part of the community, participating in the conversations, or promoting your services within you only need to designate whichever of those options best fits your role in the fitness industry.

The second aspect that draws so many fitness professionals to Fitness Pro Travel is to have their account and specialties reviewed for inclusion to the Fit Bodies, Inc. teaching vacation program.  And, here is where a few minor changes have taken place…

Personal Trainer	Golf Pro	Group Fitness	Tennis Coach
Yoga Instructor	Cycling Instructor	Zumba Instructor	Pilates Instructor

These 8 specialty positions are currently offering availability for the fitness pro to become an international fitness presenter through the Fit Bodies program… So What Changed?

Change 1 – Pilates and Yoga now each hold their own distinction as an independent specialty.  Often a resort will take either discipline for the week in a teaching exchange as it does currently, but now you can search out opportunities specific to your expertise in these areas.

Change 2 – To provide certain hospitality locations with greater specificity in regards to the qualifications of the fitness professionals we connect them with, additional formats have been added to the Yoga and Personal Trainer positions (more on these in a future post)

For our existing account holders you will want to ensure your account is up to date so that you are able to access the greatest number of Fit Bodies teaching vacation opportunities.

Change 3 – Is how you will make those updates.  Similar to the current community set up you will (when logged in):

1. Cursor over “Account” tab
2. Click on “Edit Profile” from the drop down menu
3. Scroll down the page to the section called “Specialties”

Here you will be able to view all the fitness professional specialties that your account is currently approved for.  If it is not accurate you will follow the link thre for directions on how to go about requesting your information be updated…. Take those easy steps and viola, you will be set to take full advantage of our community and the Fit Bodies teaching vacation program.

Surprising to me that I’ve only advised over the past 8 years managing FPT a handful of Fit Pros on attaining multiple specialties simply so that they can take greater advantage of this Fit Bodies program……..  Are there many of you who have realized the great opportunities and done this on your own???

**remember, this is all for the new website that is just over a month out in opening its doors to the entire community.  Feel free to update your account sooner if you like, but the above procedures will be available in the new system to make it easier and more reliable in reflecting your true fitness specialties.

Building Our New Community Home from the Ground Up

I mentioned not long ago that there were several updates and changes coming to the Fit Pro Community.  I guess it’s a bit more than a few updates. It’s really a complete rebuild that will provide the community and Fit Bodies travel program many new opportunities and options.

I also mentioned that I would begin updating here in pieces to help you prepare on getting the most from your free or premium account.

This first update may not be as fantastic or out there as the video bonus that follows, but it is a huge technology step from the internet home we originally built back in 2003.  We will soon be up to date using the most current of internet programming protocols, which will equate to a better experience for you.

So, if you enjoyed that entire video and now are a bit freaked out on all the extra terrestrial happenings, you have nothing to worry about in comparison here.

While not as exciting and fantastic as the video the custom programmer had this to say,

“The new cart is built on the most current internet standards using OOP PHP5, MySQL and AJAX.  Speed and security have each been improved.  Order and catalog management features have been enhanced significantly.”

More to follow with what this updated cart will do for you soon.

Have you been to any of the teaching vacation options yet?  Leave your comment/testimonial here and you’ll earn the 50/50 discount.

Image by sun dazed via Flickr

Denise put together a blog post within Fitness Pro Travel laying out the simplest of ways to find and book a teaching vacation that will say you thousands of dollars on a Caribbean resort stay.  The info is valuable enough that I’m re-posting here.
(to view Denise’s post at FPT – Add her as a “friend” and then check her blog)

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This site becomes very easy to maneuver once you realize the top left side of the page is your search engine.  Below please find your basic steps to book your trip to paradise.

Step 1 – sign into your Fitnessprotravel.com account

Step 2 – Top left corner – under search – you may either use the drop down menu for a particular resort or first choose a country to travel to or a date, click the orange find button.

Step 3 – What will appear is a list of resort that meets your criteria.  On the first page you will see a brief description of the resort along with the administration fee.  If you click on the name of the resort – for example Secrets Montego Bay – your specialty for example yoga (it turns yellow when you run your cursor over it) you will see a more complete description of the resort.

The teaching schedule for each resort may be found under the “Travel Spots” tab.  Resorts are listed alphabetically.

Step 4 – Once you choose a resort on the bottom right side of the page you will see “select the date you would like to visit”.  Please confirm this is the date you are wishing to travel.  Then you add the week to your shopping cart.

Step 5 – Follow the directions to check out. (book your dates)

Very important – do not purchase airline tickets until you receive a confirmation letter from Fit Bodies, Inc. staff via info@fitnessprotravel.com.  This normally arrives 12-18 hours after you order has been processed.

All of our travel is Sunday to Sunday.  You are responsible for your air fare to your destination.  Once you arrive at your destination some resorts include transfers some do not (this information is included in the property description) if not you would be responsible for your transfer.  Your vacation includes 7 night’s accommodations, all food, drinks, alcohol, taxes and tips for 2 adults and 2 adults plus 2 children 12 and under at the family resorts.

Question?  Email me denise@fitbodiesinc.com

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or feel free to ask those questions here and I’ll provide answers for all view.

It hasn’t been any different the past three days at FPT and I’m guessing the activity will stay high over the next three while the launch period continues.  Our 50% discount offer for upgraded membership (discount ended) seems to be appreciated and has had many visitors visiting their accounts and doing what we’d hoped, upgrading… All Good.

In addition to seeing the statistics of the many fitness professionals accessing their accounts during this time, my mailbox has definitely been filled with many more questions.  My account blog is where i try to publish most so all can see, but I’ll share the following as it seems to be on everyone’s mind to some extent.

It’s understandable. The website changes will have some small affect upon all accounts.

So, lets see if I can take a quick crack at answering the question, “Which Fit Pro Membership Level is right for me?” (or variations of that questions anyways)

Membership selection of any level at Fitness Pro Travel is key to keeping the website lights on and continuing to add features to the network. We have added a very inexpensive option for those who have little intention of using the networking and promotional options.

Enterprise - fitness business oriented, need of particular dates and want date release, optimize affiliate commission for referrals, frequent traveler etc……….  This member level is certainly a VIP to us as they are definitely investing themselves to the network.  The promotional options make this an ultimate business value and the qualifications for front of line travel make it a frequent traveler must.

Medallion -Similar to above less the early date release notice, slightly less in quantity but also less reduced cost to less than $14 per month.  It provides bonuses for business and qualifies member for all specialty (beyond the working vacation) opportunities. I suspect this to be popular with many.

Travel - This is the new account option that provides access to most all features in small quantity. Cost aware at less than $3 per month. Is an ideal account if not expecting to need all features listed above or on side-by-side, but still want to be supportive of community growth.  I personally believe that all who utilize any feature within the site to learn about and make a decision on taking a working vacation, should activate at least at this level.  Much goes into making those informational features available and your commitment to the network is helpful.

Basic - This level provides access to the travel program, but very minimal to much else.  There are travel aspects you will not qualify for.  This Free account is ideal for a new member who wants to take a look at what the site has to offer, who else participates, and is comfortable with the legitimacy of the programs.  After the new member has gone through that process they will ideally move up to a level above.

Any account is fine to utilize the working vacation program at this time.  There is no requirement to purchase a paid membership, but it’s definitely appreciated as we continue to build the features and value to Fitness Pro Travel.

Have you had a look today?

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