MSC Divina Handed Over

The latest addition to MSC's growing fleet was delivered to them on Saturday (May 19, 2012). MSC Divina was handed over to the line at the STX France yard in Saint-Nazaire.

The new vessel is the third of the Fantasia class measuring 1,094 feet in length, 124 feet wide with a gross tonnage of 139,400 tons. There are 1,751 staterooms and suites which can carry a total of 4,345 passengers.

The elegant interior design is once again the work of award-winning naval architects De Jorio Design International.

Here, on Saturday, Ela Aponte, the wife of MSC Vice-President Diego Aponte, cuts the ribbon which releases the bottle of champagne to smash against the ship's bow. She is joined on the podium by Gianluigi Aponte, President of MSC group and MSC Divina Captain Giuliano Bossi.

The ship will be officially named by Sophia Loren in Marseille on May 29.

The Role of the Travel Agent?

When Royal Caribbean announced some of the enhancements to their Crown & Anchor loyalty program, many of them were connected to booking subsequent cruises onboard their current cruise. "Our members like to book onboard," Lillian Murphy (RCI's VP of One-to-One Marketing) said. "That is something that has come through very clear from them."

That surprises me for a couple of reasons. In this CND article, we look what Royal Caribbean says their customers are saying about the role of the travel agent in the transaction.

The complete article appeared in the June 1, 2010, edition of Cruise News Daily.

Not Everyone Can Be a Travel Agent

There's been an open secret in the cruise industry for a long time. Companies have marketed "credentials" to allow individuals to become "travel agents" and supposedly receive free or discounted travel. Most of the people who buy into this are only interested in travel benefits and have no interest in actually selling travel, except possibly a trip here or there to a friend or relative. The companies who sell these credentials which they create are usually only really interested in collecting the fee from the individual, which is usually several hundred dollars.

The cruise lines and other travel suppliers make their products available to travel agents at a discount so their sales force can see their products first-hand. When these bogus "travel agents" travel, not only does it beat the supplier out of their full revenue, but it also takes up space legitimate travel agents could be using properly. For years, the industry has attempted to deal with this, but has been unsuccessful for several reasons. Today, Royal Caribbean has taken matters into their own hands.

One of the problems faced by the industry is that a few of the individuals who bought into the program would actually intend to be part-time travel agents. In most cases, it's impossible to determine who those people are, because all the travel is booked under the main agency's name, and the suppliers have no information about which individual "agents" have actually made bookings.

Royal Caribbean has cut to the chase. They've begun terminating their business relationships with the travel-related companies they unilaterally have determined are "card mills" (i.e. providing ID cards to individuals primarily for the purpose of discounted travel). With them will go all their "agents." Royal Caribbean says this will affect well over a hundred thousand people they believe have bought into these schemes.

The company says that anyone caught up in the net who has been legitimately selling travel on the Royal Caribbean brands is welcome to apply directly to Royal Caribbean for accreditation as an independent agent. (Unlike these "travel agencies," Royal Caribbean doesn't charge.)

In addition to protecting their bottom line, Royal Caribbean sees the action as protecting the consumer and their legitimate travel agents. Few of the "agents" of these companies have had any training or real product knowledge, and for those who are selling Royal Caribbean, the company doesn't want their brands' products misrepresented to the consumer. They also said these people are not providing the full set of services they expect a travel agent to provide consumers thus shortchanging the consumer of what they would get from one of their legitimate travel agents.

Royal Caribbean said the process has just begun, and it will be an ongoing program to identify the "card mills" and sever the relationships.

This article appeared in Cruise News Daily's October 9, 2007 edition.

From the other world department:

Remember the days when going to training meant some time out of the office and flying, maybe, to some interesting interesting city for a couple of days? Thanks to the internet, you no longer get to travel anywhere, let alone have any time out of the office for training - and Costa Cruises is set to take full advantage of the latest in internet technology to train their travel agents in a way most agents probably haven't seen yet.

The line's online booking engine has recently been upgraded with a number of new features, and in order to train agents, Costa has built a classroom in the virtual version of their Palacrociere on Second Life, called Costa Click Second Life Academy. (Costa hasn't yet firmed up plans for US agents to "attend" the academy.)

For those readers unfamiliar with Second Life, the company describes itself as "a 3D online digital world imagined and created by its residents." It's hard to describe if you don't understand, but when you sign up, you create a digital representation of yourself, and you walk around and do things and "buy" virtual things there with virtual money. How do you get the money? Well, you start out by "buying" some with real money that you give Second Life. There are zillions of members around the world. For example, this afternoon at about 2pm Eastern time, there were almost 46,000 people from around the world logged on, and in the last 24 hours, they had spent more than $1.1 million.

Second Life has become so ubiquitous that real companies are starting to do real business there. NBC News, for example, will be participating in a job fair there. Likewise, Costa has set up their Palacrociere cruise terminal there, and as we mentioned, has created a classroom in the "building" (above) and will actually be holding classes there where real travel agents will learn about their real product and booking engine.

At the end of the class, agents will be able to walk around the digital model of the cruise ship Costa has built in Second Life. Now if you are ready to expand your mind, think about this: At some point, will Costa be selling virtual cruises on that ship? (for virtual money, which of you have earned in Second Life or acquired by paying real money) And if you go, will you enjoy yourself and come back relaxed? How will the spa thing work? Will the therapist in the spa try to sell you virtual products, and how will you use them? Maybe I just don't get this, but the agent training part sounds cool.

CND Headlines - A Different Take on the Situation

Crystal Cruises has changed their commission structure to discourage agents from stealing other agents' business by undercutting pricing.

* A Different Take on the Situation
Cruise lines aren't excited that travel agents discount their product. They want a knowledgeable and professional sales force selling their product, not ones cutting their profit to the minimum and hiring inexperienced sales people who don't stay very long. To that end, they don't want travel agents giving up significant portions of their commission just to compete with each other on price.

As we've reported in the past, several cruise lines have come out with policies meant to discourage agents from rebating and advertising discounted rates, but last Friday, Crystal came out with a unique policy to address their situation.

The discounting and rebating came to the luxury end of the market relatively late. What Crystal has noticed lately is a growing number of customers requesting to switch their bookings to a different travel agent after they are under deposit.

As they have looked into this phenomenon, what they've found is a growing number of travel agents soliciting other agents' booked customers by offering to surpass whatever discount, onboard credit or other incentive the other agent is offering if the passenger will transfer the booking to them. Of course, why not? The first agent has done all the work of finding the client, helping them select the cruise, discussed all the options and has done the booking. The vast majority of the time and expertise necessary for the booking has already been done. On most bookings there is usually a relatively minimal amount of time necessary to finish assisting the client _ usually just processing the final payment and delivering the documents. So why shouldn't the second agent be willing to work for a lot less money. Of course the first agent ends up with nothing for all the time and expertise invested.

Crystal came up with a clever solution that should put a stop to the practice, at least if the first agent has gotten as far with the customer as collecting a deposit. Effective January 1, if a customer under deposit wants to switch travel agents, they can still do it, but the new agent's commission will be capped at 10%.

The theory is that if the agent isn't making as much money in the first place, they don't have as much to discount/rebate, so the problem should be solved.

"We believe this is another step toward curbing rebating activity and we want to protect the original agent who has worked hard to service a client," said Bill Smith, Crystal's SVP of sales & marketing. "Guests are free to choose the agent or agency with whom they work. In the luxury sector, they should be evaluating service and not who is willing to buy them away from another agent because of promises of discounts or rebates."

This applies both to bookings coming from agencies, and from bookings made onboard Crystal ships. (At the time of booking onboard, passengers must designate the agency with whom they want to be the agency of record.)

Simply put, the idea is that the customer should shop for his agent first, not after the agent has invested the time with the client. Once the agent has done that, the agent should then be paid for his investment.

Previously to curb rebating, Crystal instituted a policy that they will only process credit card payments for the full amount of the booking, not a discounted amount.

This article appeared in the October 1, 2007 edition of Cruise News Daily.

CND Headlines - Squeezing from another Side

The Royal Caribbean brands followed Carnival Corp's lead today and eliminated payment of commission to travel agents in North America on air add-ons purchased by customers.
The move applies to the Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Azamara brands and is effective November 1.

Not included were the occasional promotional rates where air and cruise are bundled together in one price. (Why do we think those will become even more "occasional" now?)

The company said the reason was "to remain competitive." Like Carnival, Royal Caribbean gave no indication of intending to immediately reduce the price of the air add-ons once commissions are eliminated.

Details are in today's edition of Cruise News Daily.

From the support department:

On Wednesday, we reported in Cruise News Daily that the brands of Carnival Corp would cease paying commission to travel agents on air add-ons. In preparing the article, we checked with the two largest multi-brand cruise companies in the US, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, and neither could even muster a "no comment" during the afternoon. That probably meant they were caught totally by surprise and really needed to think out their positions.

MSC USA is obviously committed to the agency distribution system for their products because just a few minutes ago, they became the first competing brand in the US to speak out on the issue when they issued this statement:

“MSC Cruises is a proud supporter of the travel agent community. It is our intent to grow business together and share our success with our agent partners,” says Richard E. Sasso, President and CEO of MSC Cruises (USA).

“We have always supported travel agents with an unprecedented commission structure and will continue to do so. In addition to the already high-level commissions we offer on the cruise portion, MSC Cruises demonstrates our support by offering 10% commission on air, 10% on pre-booked shore excursions and 10% on pre-booked spa packages,” Sasso continues.

“When it comes to working with travel agents, you can be assured that MSC Cruises will continue to be an innovator. We will continue to offer a commission structure and programs designed to help you profit,” he adds.