Specialty: Gay Cruises – Group Sailings Set This Niche on Course

When Stan Jenson, also known as Stan the Cruise Man, organized his first gay Halloween cruise group back in the late 1990s, he didn’t know that he was also launching what would become a significant niche focus of his cruise-only agency. Today, in addition to his annual “Halloweenie” cruise, he leads three to four gay and lesbian cruise groups every year, and books many clients onto gay charter sailings.

At the time Jenson purchased a franchise cruise agency (now an independent NEST-affiliated agency), he had never worked as a travel agent and the only time he’d been at sea was with World Campus Afloat. Thanks to training by the franchise company and taking “all the cruise line specialist courses I’ve been able to find” in the 13 years since he opened his agency, Jenson told TMR his cruise knowledge is now encyclopedic.

He said his expertise in gay travel came naturally. He organized the first gay cruise group as a way of getting a bunch of his gay and lesbian friends and clients together for a fun three-day Halloween party at sea. Fifty people signed on. As part of the experience he arranged for cocktail parties, game nights and other on-board activities. Everyone who went had a blast.

“Without really any extra expenditure out of my pocket, I was able to offer my clients and friends a value-added product,” Jenson told Travel Market Report.
It was so successful he did it again, and again, and again. This year’s Halloween cruise will be his thirteenth and he expects about 300 people.

The success of these cruises prompted Jenson to arrange gay groups on a larger scale. His most successful was an Alaska cruise two years ago, when he brought a group of 156 gay and lesbian guests on the Celebrity Infinity.

All in all, Jenson’s gay-focused business, run under the Out Cruising subdivision of his larger business All Ways Cruising, represents slightly less than half of his agency’s annual income. While this niche segment actually accounts for a larger number of people doing primarily smaller ticket sales, overall it is a profitable niche, he said.

For example, the Alaska cruise brought in 156 people on a Celebrity cruise paying at least $1,000 per person. Add in the TCs for 156 people (Jenson takes all the TCs a group earns), plus the override commission and bonuses and the payoff is significant.

Part of the profitability Jenson finds in his gay clients however is that they don’t only book gay products. In fact, many of the clients that come to him through Out Cruising also book their “regular” cruise travel with him.

“There’s nothing that says a gay person can only travel with a gay group or on an all-gay charter,” Jenson said. Many of his gay clients return to him when they want to book their families on a holiday cruise, or a couples cruise to the Caribbean, regardless of whether its part of a gay group or not. These bookings “have nothing to do with a gay niche. It’s just that I have developed them as loyal clients.”

Jenson attracts new niche clients in a variety of ways, including leaving fliers at gay and lesbian centers throughout Southern California. He also sends fliers to all the associations and social groups he belongs to, of which there are quite a few, mostly gay fraternal organizations of various sorts.

One such organization is the Third Wednesday Pot Luck Society, which is comprised of 50 to 60 gay men who go around to different people’s houses each month for a pot luck dinner. While very much a social event for Jenson, the minute he gets home he begins cataloging which members were interested in which cruise products.

“I get a lot of bookings from these events,” he said.

Jenson also said his Out Cruising Web site is visited frequently by people doing Web searches for gay and lesbian cruises.

Referrals also are responsible for bringing in new business. The Halloween cruises in particular are great for referrals because past participants bring new guests each year. So while he doesn’t make a lot of money on the three-day sailings, at least one-third of the group are new clients for Jenson’s business.

A Common Question

Do you need to be gay to sell gay travel? Jenson says no. “I think all travel agents should be aware of products that will be of value to their gay and lesbian clients because whether you embrace it or not, you do have gay and lesbian clients. As a travel agent you have a duty to be aware that there are some products that will be more satisfying for those clients than others.”

However, when it comes to actually selling gay travel, non-gay travel sellers need to be careful about when to introduce these options. According to Jenson, for a non-gay travel agent to initiate the topic would be “an absolute minefield.” There must first be some degree of openness from the client. An agent can do irreparable damage by mistakenly offering a gay cruise to a straight client.

Even Jenson is very careful to keep his clientele straight (no pun intended) in his business, using a coding system in his database to distinguish between Out Cruising clients and All Ways Cruising clients. And sometimes, very rarely, he gets it wrong.

Last year he accidentally sent out an e-mail for a gay product to a non-gay segment of his database.

“I just died a million deaths,” he said. Jenson was lucky. He got a few amusing responses back, but told TMR he did not lose any clients because of the mistake.

For agents that don’t feel comfortable researching gay cruise options, an easy solution is to sell their clients into Jenson’s groups. This allows agents to offer their gay and lesbian clientele value-added group travel with like-minded individuals without having to know a lot about gay cruising. In addition, Jenson pays 10% commission to agents who sell their clients into his groups, and is adamant about never poaching a client for future travel.

The Niche Fine Line

The effective use of a niche is a true example of a win-win situation, Jenson told Travel Market Report. A travel seller with a niche to offer will attract clients she or he may not otherwise attract, and if the seller then delivers a superior vacation experience, the clients are going to enjoy themselves. “They’re going to love you and they’re going to be loyal,” he said.

But agents must walk a fine line so that they do not become so nichified that clients don’t realize they handle a wider range of products than just the niche. Jenson said he gets very aggravated by Out Cruising clients calling him to tell them they booked their family cruise with another agent because it wasn’t a gay cruise.

“On the one hand I want to get them excited that I’m simpatico. That I know their special needs and can handle it better than anyone. But on the other hand I want them to know I do all the other stuff too.”