‘Facebook should still be a key part of your marketing’
The demise of Facebook is “grossly exaggerated”, with the social media platform still the number-one network used by millennials and their offspring, according to a digital marketing expert. Oli Yeates, founder and chief
Agents and delegates on Carnival Horizon
Christine Duffy, Carnival Cruise Line
Carnival ‘software’ takes priority over bigger vessels
Carnival Cruise Line has no intention of building the world’s largest cruise ship and instead aims to improve the onboard experience with each new launch, the line’s president said.
Speaking on board new ship
Carnival Horizon, Christine Duffy said it “has never really been about the hardware” for Carnival. Carnival launched 3,960-passenger Carnival Horizon earlier this month and will welcome Carnival Panorama, with a capacity for 3,934 passengers, into its fleet in November next year. But neither vessel matches
the largest cruise ships in the industry, such as Royal Caribbean’s
6,680-passenger Symphony of the Seas, which launched in March. Carnival’s yet-to-launch
Excellence-class ships will have a capacity for 5,200 passengers. Duffy said: “For us, it has never been about building the largest ship. It is about giving the crew and guests a great experience.” She later said that while
Carnival Horizon was a “beautiful ship”, the ‘software’ on a new
Carnival vessel remained more of a priority than the ‘hardware’. “A lot of the enhancements that
we have made with these new ships is what you don’t see,” she
“It’s never been about building the largest ship. It is about a great experience”
said, adding: “That is something that is really important to us; the improved Wi-Fi is as much for our guests as it is for the crew.” New Vista-class ship Carnival
Horizon features SkyRide, a cycle track suspended 150 feet in the air, a Dr Seuss-themed water park; and an elevated climbing frame, SkyCourse. Both SkyRide and
SkyCourse appeared on Carnival Vista, the first Vista-class ship.
Baillie: Tap into our global range of cruises
UK agents should take advantage of Carnival’s worldwide range of sailings, said UK and international sales vice-president Iain Baillie. He was speaking on board Carnival Horizon which, after sailing
four Mediterranean cruises from Barcelona, will reposition to New York for the summer and then to Miami in September, from where it will operate six to eight-night Caribbean cruises for a year. Asked if UK agents should be rewarded with more European
deployment by Carnival, Baillie told Travel Weekly: “Our travel agent partners like that we are providing them with a different opportunity in terms of deployment, generally out of North America and the Caribbean.” He added that UK agents were discovering that new-to-cruise
customers were attracted to short sailings, which could be packaged up with land-based trips in North America.
Oli Yeates, Clicky Media 26 April 2018
travelweekly.co.uk 15
executive of digital agency Clicky Media, said travel firms and agents should respond to the demands of millennials and their children, who will soon be booking their own holidays. “People born since the millennium will be the largest generation in numbers ever,” he said. “They are more informed and more connected to each other. They are the least brand loyal and 60% claim that experiencing culture is the most important part of a holiday. They may not be your customers now but they will be in 10 years, so you need to be ready.” Yeates said video is
increasingly important, as are mobile-ready websites that load quickly, with 45% of visits to travel sites now via mobile. He urged agents to make
websites bookable and look at modern payment systems such as ApplePay, and to make sites more visual with high- resolution photos and video. Yeates said it was crucial
that websites loaded fast, adding: “Over 40% of people abandon websites if they don’t load within three seconds.”
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