Norwegian Cruise Line
Q. Norwegian Cruise Line is one of the sponsors of this year’s Agent Achievement Awards. Given that last year’s awards were cancelled because of Covid, how important is this year’s event in the travel calendar? A. At NCL we put our travel partners at the heart of everything we do. Since March 2020, when the travel industry and, indeed, the wider world, was plunged into the pandemic, we have been overwhelmed by the commitment and support we’ve received from agents. That’s why we are delighted to be a premium sponsor of the AAAs once again and, let’s face it, agents deserve the recognition of the awards more than ever before. We are honoured and proud to be part of this key industry event.
EAMONN FERRIN vice-president, international business, NCL
Q. The AAAs are the biggest travel agent awards in the UK. How important is the channel to NCL, and what have you been doing to strengthen trade relationships? A. We’ve made huge efforts to reinvent and re-engage with our travel agent partners during the pandemic. With such unstable territory due to the cancellations, changes and new safety protocols, we thought it more important than ever to engage with agent partners daily. By doing this, we lived our ‘partners first’ philosophy, and put agents at the centre of everything we do. Despite the challenging year, NCL’s sales
and marketing teams have gone the extra mile in helping our trade partners with numerous new and innovative technology and systems to ease the burdens brought about by the pandemic. In the first instance, we supported our agent
partners as they dealt with the initial aftermath of hundreds of cancelled itineraries. Once this hurdle was overcome, NCL quickly moved to launching a range of webinars, as well as hundreds of communications and toolkits
around policies and procedures. We then went on to launch a range of innovative support platforms, including trade portal Norwegian Central and our NCL Air system to make fly-cruise packaging quicker and easier. On top of that, we launched NCL Freestyle Rewards, our incentive programme aimed at UK partners.
Q. With travel rules and protocols becoming more complicated, how important are agents in helping NCL make those vital sales in the recovery? A. The pandemic hampered sales through most of 2020 and much of 2021 due to the cancellation of cruising worldwide, but our loyal travel agents have never hit pause. Despite this, the NCL UK sales and marketing team achieved some outstanding sales results by working closely with our agent partners. Sales for 2022 and 2023 are showing significant gains versus comparable future-year booking levels in 2019. This reinforces our belief that the UK NCL sales and marketing teams, alongside the wider NCL team, deserve praise for their outstanding performance this past year. We recently launched Norwegian Prima, the
first of six ships within our highly-anticipated next class of vessels, Prima Class, and our travel agent support is clear from its record-breaking sales. The vessel has set the single-best booking day and best initial booking week of any of our new-builds in our 54-year history. It’s a truly exciting time for NCL, and it wouldn’t have been possible without our travel agent partners.
Q. Pandemic aside, what has been the big news at NCL since the last Agent Achievement Awards in July 2019? A. Earlier this year, we announced the first of six ships within our new Prima Class of vessels.
agentachievementawards.co.uk
Eamonn Ferrin
Eamonn Ferrin
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
