P&O Cruises recorded the highest traffic to its website in history the day after it partnered with the Baftas.
Carnival UK president Paul Ludlow told this year’s Clia conference the line was “thrilled” with the demand for cruises in the days following the awards ceremony.
“Following the weekend of the Baftas, we had the highest traffic to our website in our history, and then we were really pleased with the conversion to sales,” he said.
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“On the Monday after the Baftas, we booked four times as many guests on a cruise than we did the Monday prior, and the vast majority of those customers were new.”
Ludlow went on to hail the value of partnering with brands customers are familiar with, saying it is “key” to securing new-to-cruise business.
P&O Cruises also partners with chef Marco Pierre White and singers Gary Barlow and Nicole Scherzinger, who have both created shows specifically for the line.
He said the relationship P&O Cruises has with household names makes it more “accessible” to customers, and helps “break down barriers”.
“By having people like Marco Pierre White cooking the food for our main dining room and Gary Barlow performing on stage, it gives customers a benchmark of what we can offer them and breaks down some walls that we’ve struggled to get through in the past where customers didn’t know what to expect from us.”