The Advantage Travel Partnership is on track to double the members of its cruise community by the end of the year, its annual conference heard last week.
Jonny Peat, senior cruise manager for The Advantage Travel Partnership, said at its biggest ever annual Latitude cruise conference on board Ambassador Cruise Line ship Ambience: “By the end of the year, we are going to be up to 600 members of our Latitude cruise community.
“If there are people within your businesses that aren’t members right now, get them to join. It’s very much about these events and sharing knowledge and working together to really drive that business.”
Kelly Cookes (pictured), chief commercial officer at the Advantage Travel Partnership, shared more details of additional earning opportunities for members from cruise bookings.
She said: “There’s obviously the base commercial, but the team also work really hard to secure additional uplifts at certain times of the year and incentives.
“In the past 12 months, the additional earning opportunities through all of those have led to us paying out an additional £1 million worth of cruise-related income to members.”
Peat said the average selling price for cruise within Advantage was ahead of every other sector and said in a media briefing the average commission for members for cruise bookings was around 15%.
He told Latitude members attending the conference: “Not only are we selling more of cruise, but we are selling at higher prices, and you’re doing an absolutely sterling job collectively, which we’re really pleased about.”
Peat highlighted revenue growth during September cruise month was 20% compared to 2023 which in turn had been up 53% compared to 2022.
He said: “It’s absolutely only going one way. We’re chasing really big growth all the time, and you are all delivering a stellar performance.”
Cruise ‘resilient’
Cookes said 72% of members had seen an increase in demand for cruise in a recent poll which she described as “absolutely phenomenal”.
She added: “Cruise, despite the headwinds like rising household costs, geopolitical tensions and changing consumer sentiments, is a sector that remains remarkably resilient.”
“On the back of a couple of really good trading years, cruisers in the UK are set to hit 2.2 million this year, which is a 15% increase versus last year and with the continued investment in the sector and the outstanding value that it offers, we’re not likely to see this start to differ anytime soon. If anything, it’s just going to continue to build and grow.”
Peat and Cookes said they planned to grow the dedicated cruise team at the Advantage Travel Partnership to become the “go-to-cruise partner”.
In the coming year Latitude would focus more on river, luxury and expedition cruises and introduce more “tailormade” training for beginner, intermediate and expert cruise sellers both in-person and online.
Peat also outlined promises for more ship visits and fam trips in the coming year, with 450 members stepping foot on a ship this year. In particular, more of a focus on regional ports would be part of the plan next year, he added.
Introduce cruise to every client
In terms of who to target in future for cruise sales, Peat said 71% of people that have never stepped foot on a ship were “ready to talk about it”, so members should make the most of the opportunity.
He added: “Aside from the obvious targeting the yet-to-cruise crowd, we also want to cast our net wider across the whole of the holiday business, so there is a real opportunity, I believe, to introduce cruise to each and every one of your clients.
“My ambition would be that even if your clients don’t mention cruise when you’re talking to them, either in your store or over the phones, just introduce cruise as a wild card. The worst they can say is, no, they don’t want to hear any more about it. And the best they can say is tell me a little bit more.”
At the close of the conference, Gordon Wilson, Ambassador Cruise Line chair, said bookings for the line from Advantage members were up 35% year on year, and the number of Advantage agencies booking for the first time has risen by 20% in the same timeframe.
The Advantage Travel Partnership was number five in terms of top-producing travel agencies, he added.
In a Q&A session, Peat asked for “simplified messaging” from cruise line partners on behalf of members, to “make the whole selling processes a lot easier”.
Meanwhile, Cookes asked for more content for social media platforms that can be “dragged and dropped” across different platforms without reformatting.