Carnival devotes more resources to travel agents

Carnival Paradise

Carnival Cruise Line will carve out four new sales territories in fast-growing areas of the country, each to be headed by a business development manager.

At the same time, Carnival made other changes to its sales structure, including the formation of a program to focus management attention on independent agents.

The four new territories are Boston and Rhode Island; Jacksonville, Fla.; western Texas; and the four corners region that includes parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

Carnival also highlighted the formation of a new groups desk that was inaugurated earlier in October. The desk is designed to provide additional technical support for travel agent questions related to group bookings, Carnival said. It can be reached at (800) 327-5782.

"We created these new sales regions and the independent agent program to provide added business development support for travel partners," said Carnival vice president of sales and trade marketing Adolfo Perez. "The growth in these geographies and the independent agent channel, combined with our recent preferred supplier agreements with Travelsavers/Nest, Signature, and Ensemble, make this the right time for us to expand our field team resources."