Travel Weekly Cruise Club member Americas4u is experiencing a huge rise in cruise sales, with its Febraury cruise bookings double those taken in January.
The agency sold more cruise product in January and February together than in the whole of last year.
The biggest single booking came from a referral from a past customer for a £16,000 cruise on Celebrity Cruises’ Constellation sailing out of Dover in September.
Director Rob Evans said the agency is having particular success selling Royal Caribbean International and is actively promoting Celebrity Cruises, Carnival and Princess Cruises.
“The increase in bookings has come about because we are focusing on cruise. Because we have our own ground arrangements through sister company Getabed.co.uk and our own flights we are able to create our own packages and we have sold mostly cruise-only.
“This time last year we were only focusing on our core US ground product but it’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it. Although we have doubled our marketing spend for cruise since the start of January we are still spending very little but getting a nice return from it.”
Reservation staff have also been doing cruiseline training and four have achieved the top Captain’s status in Royal Caribbean’s Cruising for Excellence programme while one has completed and another is doing Complete Cruise Solution’s revamped Waves of Wisdom training.
Evans said the agency has also had encouraging meetings with Regent Seven Seas and Fred Olsen Cruise Lines in recent weeks, with the latter in discussions about a 50/50 deal on marketing.
Agency consults cruiseline partners on website logo
Americas4u is asking for views from cruiseline partners about which logo it should choose for its new website Click4cruise.co.uk.
The online agency said it has had a good response after it e-mailed a selection of possible logos to operators last week ahead of a final decision about which one to choose within the next two weeks. The site should go live in late spring.
The cruise-dedicated website is still under development by Crewe-based CSI media.