Celestyal has pledged to increase its support and training for UK travel agents as part of the cruise line’s investment in its products and trade partnerships.
The Greek islands and eastern Mediterranean specialist last week unveiled details of its newest ship, Celestyal Journey, which starts sailing in September – plus a new trade packaging platform for UK agents, called Celestyal Holidays.
New chief commercial officer Lee Haslett told a Travel Weekly webcast that the UK is a “real focus” for Celestyal, which also sells in North America, Australia and other overseas markets.
“We’re really excited to be able to offer [Celestyal Holidays] exclusively in the UK market, which makes us easier to do business with – we are striving to be the easiest to do business with,” he said.
“We’re really excited about putting this into the market, as well as putting the Celestyal Journey on sale.”
He added: “Our plan now is to really focus on education for travel agents.
“We recently launched a new training programme a few months ago called Celestyal Stars, which is an e-learning programme…so we’re encouraging agents to get involved with that.
“We’ve got a new suite of marketing coming out, with deck plans and all the tools that we know that agents will need to be able to sell us.
“And we’re increasing the size of our team in the UK. We’ve got three people in the UK at the moment.
“We plan to continue to invest in the UK; it is a real strategic market for us.”
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He said Celestyal has seen a “phenomenal” start to the cruising season, which began couple of weeks ago.
It has also unveiled special offers and “great” agent incentives to mark the launch of sales for Celestyal Journey.
He said the new ship will have more balcony cabins than the existing vessels in the fleet – Olympia and Crystal – and feedback from travel agents showed that such cabins are in demand.
Celestyal is investing €20 million in the refurbishment of Journey, which will also offer a greater choice of dining, bars, venues and public spaces.
“It will really be a step change for us, with that ‘premiumness’…it will be a lot more of what we know customers want,” he told the webcast.
Furthermore, there will be a launch event with trade partners to mark the start of Journey’s itineraries in September, he added.
“We are very, very focused on investing our fleet,” said Haslett, noting how the pandemic had put the “brakes on” expansion plans.
“We’ll have more news on further investment during the rest of this year,” he told the webcast.
“We are very much committed to renewing our fleet. Watch this space.”