Carnival UK introduced its new senior team to trade partners on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 recently. Travel Weekly editor Lucy Huxley was on board
Carnival UK: New pricing structure aims to increase forward bookings
Carnival UK has sets its sight on emulating other travel sectors such as hotels or car hire by offering the best prices early and increasing them the nearer to departure.
Chief commercial officer Gerard Tempest said a new pricing structure, brought in to replace Vantage and Getaway fares a fortnight ago, was an attempt to increase forward bookings.
He said: “With a fly-cruise, people rush to buy flights early as they know they will get more expensive the longer they leave it, but they don’t worry about booking the cruise until late, and yet it’s no less perishable.
“We have to reverse that and we want to reward our agents who book early and ensure they get value for doing so.”
Asked if this strategy was realistic given all the new capacity coming on line and the likelihood of having left over cabins to sell cheap close to departure, Tempest said: “We’ve had a lot of volume to shift in the last 90 days and that’s forced us to drop our prices.
“But the new capacity is more about having more compelling brands driven by our sales and marketing. Price is only one of the tools we have at our disposal.”
Sales director Chris Truscott said the new pricing model would allow Carnival to create targeted promotions such as drink packages.
“Campaigns will form part of the strategy. Rather than going out with loads of campaigns, we want to use intelligence from the Insights Team, combined with agent discussions to target offers.”
Truscott revealed about 200 early-booked cruises had come down in price since moving to the new fare structure, but claimed that Carnival UK had “seen all those customers right”.
And he confirmed any special packages offered as a booking incentive in January would not be applied to customers who had already booked their cruises.
“They will not get packages offered in January [added retrospectively]. It’s a different proposition.”
Tempest added: “The price promise is about price. The offers are about value so we won’t be altering price in this scenario.”
Carnival UK: Insights team will make data useful
Carnival UK has employed its first customer insights director admitting “we were a business that was data-heavy but insight-light”.
Tempest said: “Anyone can create a spreadsheet, but it’s being able to identify trends and act on them. You can do lots of data capture, but it’s what you do with it afterwards that counts.”
Jeremy Tait, who joined from Direct Line insurance, will lead the new Insights Team, which has already uncovered some interesting information.
P&O Cruises marketing director Christopher Edgington said: “The most surprising fact is how much opportunity we have with empty nesters.
“There are lots of them out there and we are not getting as many as we should be.”
Tait said that although loyalty to P&O Cruises and Cunard was high, a lot of people had cruised once but never again. “We have to find out why and how we can get them to come back,” he said.
Carnival UK said it would share its insight with agents to help them better target potential customers.
P&O Cruises: Britannia a ‘no brainer’
P&O Cruises has no worries about over-capacity despite the arrival of Britannia in 2015, its largest-ever vessel.
The ship will increase the line’s capacity by 19% that year and by 25% in the full year from launch.
New marketing director Christopher Edgington said: “The great news is only 5% of the total holiday market takes a cruise so the potential is enormous and we can be even more evangelical about cruise to ensure demand continues to rise.”
He added P&O Cruises “would be giving agents no-brainer reasons to get their customers on board” Britannia.
“Britannia will be bang on for existing customers, but we are working with design partners who have created some of the most exceptional hotels in the world to make an interior like you have never seen before on a cruise ship.
“Currently, our entertainment is quite passive. We want to make it more interactive and engaging.”
Edgington said the arrival of Britannia would not mark a saturation point for ex-UK cruises.
“Ex-UK is thriving. That said, I don’t want to see Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines parking their tanks on my lawn in Southampton.
“P&O Cruises is quintessentially British and we will be growing our ex-UK business.”
Asked about turn-of-year marketing, Edgington said: “I want to feel excited and emotional about the experience I will have on a cruise – not just be sold by pictures of ships.
“I will be able to tell stories based on what I know customers want from new information we are collecting from the Insights Team.
“We will have TV advertising that will create a dream, press advertising that will explain the product, and price messages will be around special promotions only.”
Princess Cruises: We need to build on ‘Kate effect’
Princess Cruises benefited beyond expectations from the media attention around the naming of Royal Princessby the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, this year.
UK director Paul Ludlow said: “It was the moment that defined our brand. We need to build on it.”
Ludlow added: “The number of new-to-brand cruisers is up year on year for 2014 due to the ‘Kate effect’.
“By the time Royal Princess was launched, many people had already booked their 2013 holiday, and so they have booked early for 2014.”
Commenting on Princess’s dedicated increasingly distinct strategy to its sister Carnival UK brands, Ludlow said: “Princess wants a mutually profitable relationship that is not just about money, but about all our terms and conditions. We have had a fantastic trade response.”
The recent departure of head of marketing Pieter van der Schee will lead to a separation of the PR and marketing functions with separate heads overseeing each department.
“We’ve always done well on PR and need someone strong to lead this. The world of marketing is changing dramatically and we need to keep pace with this as well.”
Cunard: ‘Brand story will attract new cruisers’
Cunard will unveil a new look and feel for the January peak booking period following a brand strategy review.
New marketing director, Angus Struthers said the brand had to become more relevant.
“Queen Mary 2 will be 10 next year. It’s an iconic ship, but it’s not just about the heritage it’s about being a relevant brand today and for the future.
“That means being more appealing to new customers. We can’t just rely on the iconic nature of the ship.
“It’s a fine balance ensuring we are equally as appealing to new customers as existing ones. It’s not just about pricing, I need to help agents sell a better story about Cunard and why it is so great.”
Struthers said his preconceptions about Cunard were that it was all formal dancing and afternoon tea.
“What surprised me was the breadth of the experiences on board Queen Mary 2.
“There are not many holidays where in one day you can listen to a lecture by Bill Bryson in the morning, go fencing before lunch and go to a lesson on how to use your iPad in the afternoon.
“We need to do a much better job of telling the story about the experience on a Cunard cruise.
“Cunard will change from fare-based advertising towards telling the brand story.”