Cruise Trends From TMP’S Executive Panel

Vickers, Gain, and Gardiner with TMR publisher Anne Marie Moebes.

There was a time when cruisers came to travel agents 12 months in advance, looking for a bargain. But today it’s all about value—and travel agents need to know how to sell that value, said cruise execs at Travel Market Place in Toronto this week. 

Dana Gain of Norwegian, Sandra Gardiner of AmaWaterways, and Beverly Vickers of Regent Seven Seas joined attendees to talk about cruise trends, selling from the top, and tips for travel agent success.   
 
Selling from the top
At the high end of the market, “it’s all about selling value,” Gardiner said. River cruises are more expensive because they offer an all-inclusive experience, and so many agents “are afraid to say what the price is. You have to sell them on the value that they are receiving.”  

Vickers agreed. “The bottom line in selling luxury is that it’s a value-packed experience where more is included, and it is high-quality,” she said. Don’t be afraid to suggest it to clients as a value-added vacation. “Prospecting within your database, you want to go fishing in the river cruise demographic” to earn the best commissions, she noted. 
 
Looking for the unique   
With so many cruisers coming back and looking for something a little more unusual, Asia is a hot spot for Regent Seven Seas, Vickers said, in part because it is so different from the typical cruise destinations. 

“Unique European ports of call such as Greenland, Iceland, and cruises around Britain—anything sort of unusual”— is doing well, she said. 

Even the mass-market cruises are meeting that demand for the different in their own way, Gain said. Besides the Norwegian Joy—the line’s first large ship built for specifically for the China market— “we’re seeing people making their cruises a little more exotic” even from mass-market ports like New York and Miami. 

Even AmaWaterways, which does most of its business on European rivers, is seeing an uptick of business in Asia, Gardiner said.  
 
Tips for success  
As with all sales, the place to start for selling high-end cruises is in your existing client base. 

“You must continuously make contact with those clients. When they travel you must continuously be in touch with them and find out where they want to go next,” Gardiner said.  

Gain suggested also turning to your personal network. “Everyone has this huge network of people…trust me when I say you do. If you started to make a list of all the people you are in touch with every day and then who your spouse is in touch with every day, it’s such a big list. And that’s your comfort zone,” she said. “If you each found just one couple in your circle of influence that you could introduce to river cruising in the next 12 months, your commission would increase by thousands of dollars.”