Carnival Cruise Line hailed the trade as the “lifeblood” of its success during a takeover day at Hays Travel’s head office.
Training was delivered in Sunderland on Wednesday, June 14, with fun activities, pizza and drinks also provided.
Iain Baillie, the line’s vice-president of international sales, labelled Hays Travel a crucial partner of the company.
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He said: “Travel agents are our lifeblood. They’ve been critical since the very start and they remain critical.”
The takeover was the brainchild of Carnival Cruise Line’s senior account manager for international sales, Gemma Ashworth, and Hays Travel’s cruise commercial assistant manager Phoebe Thompson.
Agents started arriving at 8.30am – with the first 100 to attend receiving a goodie bag – and the event continued throughout the working day.
Ashworth said: “The idea was to do something fun, but for everyone – not just the people who sell Carnival day to day, but every part of the machine, because everyone is involved in us being successful.
“So we wanted to do something that everyone could get involved in – we wanted to bring the Carnival fun to Sunderland.”
Baillie added: “We see Hays as market leaders in what they do and they’re absolutely integral to the forward-growth plans we have at Carnival Cruise Line.
“We’re looking forward to continuing the great relationship that we have with this great business.”
The line’s director of international sales, Luke Smith, outlined the brand’s current approach to working with the trade, pointing out the importance of upcoming ship visits.
He said: “We’ve just launched the ship visit programme for this year. We’ve got six ship visits across the UK with about 240 agents coming on across those visits, so we’ll make sure we’ve got dedicated allocation of spaces for people like Hays to make sure we’re getting the right agents that are fully supporting us.”
Dame Irene Hays thanked Carnival Cruise Line for the takeover, describing the event as “really important”.
She added: “We believe that the takeover days that take place at Hays Travel’s head office are just as important as the presentations that take place for our retail conference.
“It’s really important that our creative people, our product people, our cruise back-office people all understand the personality of the brand and what distinguishes one brand from another.”
Photo: Dame Irene Hays and Carnival Cruise Line’ s vice-president of international sales, Iain Baillie, with agents at the takeover day