A DAY WITH... PLANET CRUISE
Hollie-Rae Merrick spends a day in Portsmouth with the team filming Planet Cruise’s new weekly YouTube show
O
ver the years Portsmouth-based agency Planet Cruise has become well known for
its weekly TV show. It’s been going for eight years, airing on the
Ideal World shopping channel, and was one of the key attributes that led to Iglu Cruise acquiring its then rival two years ago. According to Planet’s general manager Sharon Campbell, the show has gone from
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Keith Maynard, presenter I’m a self- employed presenter and I live in Kent. I stay
in Portsmouth ahead of the show each week. A day at Planet involves
having a production meeting in the morning where we decide on the exact areas of focus. Prior to that meeting I’ll have done some research on the ports of call or the ships
that we’re featuring that particular week. The filming usually takes about an hour to an hour and a half. I worked on cruise ships
for 12 years after getting a job on board Sun Cruises’ Sun Dream in 2000. I went from Sun Cruises to Thomson Cruises, most of the time as cruise director, then I went to Cunard and my last ship was Queen Mary 2. I really enjoy meeting
people. Last year we introduced the first ‘Cruise with Keith’ where I do tours
with Planet Cruise’s guests and host a meal. It was on Celebrity Cruises and this year’s will be on MSC Cruises. The most challenging
part of the job is trying to effectively and actively diffierentiate cruise lines for viewers because everything moves and develops so quickly in this industry. The most common
question viewers ask me is if I’ve lost weight recently because they think I’m a lot slimmer in real life than on TV!
strength to strength over the years becoming the “biggest cruise TV show in the UK”, and as a result a new YouTube series has been created to run alongside it. “The TV show is great for us because it gets
key messages out to our audience quickly, with relevant deals. Our audience trusts the advice we give and we’ve built up quite a following,” Campbell says. “The TV show is at a set time (8pm every Thursday) so we wanted to find a way to target existing and new customers that might need more flexibility on when they watch our show – that’s how Planet Cruise Weekly came about.”
Destination and ship content The new YouTube show is produced and filmed separately from the TV programme – the former is shot in a studio at the cruise specialists offices in Portsmouth, while the latter is filmed at Ideal World’s base in Peterborough. Hosted by cruise experts Keith Maynard and Glenn Wallis, Planet Cruise Weekly is due to air its 17th show this week. It started out focusing primarily on deals,
but feedback from viewers has led to the introduction of more destination and ship- focused content. “This is all about engagement for us,” says
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travelweekly.co.uk 23 June 2016
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