What’s a Risk Travel Advisors Can (and Should) Take?

During last week’s CLIA Cruise360 conference a panel of cruise company CEOs talked about how important it is for businesses to take risks in order to grow and learn. The CEOs – of Carnival Corp., Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Royal Caribbean Cruises, and MSC Cruises – spoke from a high-level perspective that was interesting to hear, but they did not offer practical guidance on how smaller businesses can follow their advice.

To bring their macro-level discussion of risk down to a more micro level, TMR asked three cruise line sales executives for their advice.

“Travel advisors innovate in different ways than the big corporations,” Vicki Freed, senior vice president, sales, trade support, and service at Royal Caribbean International, told us. “They don’t have the financial wherewithal, they don’t have the support of a huge team, but there are so many ways that a travel advisor can innovate and grow their business.”

“Obviously it depends on the advisor and their model,” said John Chernesky, senior vice president, North American sales for Norwegian Cruise Line.

For both Freed and Chernesky, taking a risk starts with groups, something that many advisors who have never done a group before find intimidating.

“Let’s say they’re an independent or running their own shop either in a host channel or another model. I think one could look at the risk of creating a group… taking out space, putting money into advertising for this group,” Chernesky said. “That could be risky, especially for those that nave never done it before… maybe you don’t understand how to navigate taking out space and the group contracts and what amenities to choose. That to me could be a bigger risk for them just because it’s unfamiliar.”

He added that the pay-off is worth whatever riskiness advisors might think groups hold.

“I truly believe in the power of referrals. It’s the most effective form of any marketing. This ties right into groups,” he said.

Even scarier for many advisors, he said, is doing hosted groups, but these often create a following of people who want to cruise together year after year.

While Carmen Roig, vice president of sales for Princess Cruises, also thinks groups feel like a risky move for many travel advisors, she said there’s a “risk” that’s even more important for advisor to be taking.

“If you’re in this business, you’ve got to put yourself out there. And a lot of travel advisors, they get in, they’ll send a client on a cruise, and then they don’t follow-up,” she said.

She added that from her end she can see in the booking records how many cruisers book with multiple agencies, and while some of that might come from shopping behavior, Roig believes their advisors aren’t staying in front of them.

“They’re only a prospect until you close them. Then they’re your client. We feel so warm and fuzzy, oh my client, they went on this wonderful cruise. But the moment they get back, they’re a prospect again,” she said. “You’ve got to turn it around and our travel advisors and consultants have go to be more proactive.”

For Roig that means going beyond email and beyond texting to picking up the phone.

“We lost the art of communication, which I think is critical. It is actually very refreshing as a consumer when you get somebody that calls you, how was your trip? How was your experience?”

Ultimately, the three executives all agreed that advisors don’t need to be thinking in the same large terms that cruise line executives are thinking.

“It doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to be huge,” Freed said. “It’s about thinking broader and thinking in a different direction.”

Roig added that it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time. “When you try the first time and you fail, it doesn’t mean you’re failing forever. You’ve got to keep trying… It’s hard, yes but hard gets easier, the more you do it.”