P&O Cruises’ new managing director Carol Marlow will be spending time meeting passengers as she carves out a figurehead role for herself similar to the one she held at Cunard.
Marlow, formerly president and managing director of Cunard, was confirmed as managing director of P&O Cruises last week, replacing Nigel Esdale who has taken a new commercial role at Carnival UK.
She said: “There is a big opportunity here to make sure P&O has a figurehead, someone who can understand what our passengers want. That role has not existed at P&O before.
“People know me as [the face of] Cunard but things move on. I’m a good people person and I will be spending time on the ships talking to passengers. It’s important for me to know what they want.”
Marlow intends to visit all the ships while they are in Southampton within the next couple of weeks, and to have sailed on them all by mid-October.
She admitted she was having to re-educate herself about the P&O brand, which she worked for in 1999/2000 as marketing director. Then there were just four ships, which changed to three when Victoria left the fleet.
Now there are six vessels and a seventh, Azura, due to launch in April 2010, at the same time as Celebrity Cruises’ new ship Celebrity Eclipse starts cruising from Southampton.
Speaking on Eclipse’s sister ship Celebrity Equinox, which was in Southampton this week for its inaugural celebrations and naming ceremony, Marlow said: “Eclipse will be quite different to Azura. They will offer different experiences, and it is up to us to explain that to agents and consumers.”
She added: “Azura is a big challenge because we need to grow the market and we have a long way to go, but the cruise market generally is doing reasonably well. There is growth.”
As well as getting to know the ships and passengers, Marlow said her new role necessitates a complete change in terminology. On Cunard, guests take voyages; on P&O, passengers take cruises.
She said: “P&O passengers want something different to those who go on Cunard. They are different brands, and it is important to maintain that difference and build on it.”