Healthy Sail Panel Hopes to Have Plan By August 31 for Royal and Norwegian

The Healthy Sail Panel created by Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings hopes to have its initial recommendations back to each company by the end of August, according to Vicki Freed, senior vice president of sales and trade support and service, Royal Caribbean International.

Suggestions will then be vetted by each company and presented to the CDC.

Working together with a rival cruise corporation, Freed said: "When it comes to safety and security, there is no competition. We need to work collaboratively as a team, as an industry."

The 11-person panel is already hard at work and is looking at everything from a reduced capacity to staggered embarkation.

Of note, Dondra Ritzenthaler, senior vice president of sales and trade support and service, Celebrity Cruises, said the CDC has been invited to participate in an observatory role.

Added Carol Cabezas, vice president and COO, Azamara: “The work of the panel will be open-sourced … available to anyone that needs it at no cost.”

She added the panel’s work may be helpful to land-based entities from spas to hotels and restaurants.

"We have to think about the destinations as well, we are working very closely with governments and ports we visit all over the globe to establish plans and protocols for the safe resumption of cruising,” said Cabezas, adding that extends to tour operator partners to make sure a safe experience continues from ship to shore.

“The goal is to create an environment that mitigates risk to the greatest extent possible while the virus is (still) a threat.”

Royal Caribbean executives anticipate travel agency consolidation

After the coronavirus crisis, there may be fewer travel agencies due to consolidation and more advisors working from home, Royal Caribbean executives said on Monday. 

Vicki Freed

During a virtual media roundtable, Royal Caribbean International senior vice president of sales, trade support and service Vicki Freed, said, “None of us has a crystal ball but I think on the top end, you’ll see the consolidation of retail locations,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Royal Caribbean execs anticipate an increase in home-based workers, including independent contractors. 

“I think the home-based type of setup for travel advisors will likely grow even more than it was,” said Azamara COO Carol Cabezas.

Although she anticipates fewer travel agents working in retail locations, Freed indicated that the number of agents could be relatively unchanged post-coronavirus, although it could take some time to ramp up to that level.

“As we reintroduce cruising to so many people, I think in time they will grow their business back,” Freed said.

Royal Caribbean is guiding travel agents about relief options available to small businesses and individuals in the Cares Act. Royal Caribbean calls its education program RCL Cares, and the company launched the effort to help keep its sales force intact. 

“We want to make sure we have a healthy distribution system that is going to be part of our future,” Freed said.  

Royal Caribbean International's Vicki Freed

By Tom Stieghorst

Mariner of the Seas

Vicki Freed

Passengers wishing to cancel cruises will face an earlier penalty period for their deposits with Royal Caribbean International. Starting March 7, the final payment deadline for bookings goes from 60 to 75 days on short cruises (four days or less) and from 75 to 90 days on longer ones. Cancellation terms even closer to departure also changed in many cases. Vicki Freed, the senior vice president of sales, trade support and service, spoke with cruise editor Tom Stieghorst about why the line made the changes.

Q: Why did Royal Caribbean change its policy to make it harder for passengers to cancel?

A: Actually, we simplified the policy. If you look at the old policy, we used to have five different [product categories, now reduced to two]. So it was really hard for travel agents to remember, 'OK, does this fall in this bucket, or in this one or this one? Was it a holiday sailing, what do you view as a holiday sailing?' There was a lot of confusion, so we wanted to just simplify it.

Q: Did you get travel agent feedback before you made the change?

A: We ran it by our travel agent advisory board back in January, and they said, yes you should do it. We said, is this going to affect bookings, what do you think? And they said, "No, we like a much stricter cancellation policy because it allows us to encourage people to buy travel insurance, and it makes the bookings stickier; people are more committed." They were saying, "This is a no-brainer. You should do it."

Q: Why do it now?

A: We did not want to do anything during Wave [season]. That was our decision as a brand. We wanted to do it with new deployment, which we're ... just releasing now. [Royal releases schedules for the Caribbean, Bahamas and Northeast regions for 2017-18 on March 7]. So that's why we're doing it now.

Q: Simplifying the policy sounds logical, but couldn't you have simplified it and kept the same final payment period you had previously?

A: Yeah, I suppose we could have. If you really look at the differences, when you compare it, the 75% of the total price [penalty] for the shorter cruises remains the same, from 28 to 15 days, 50% [penalty] went from 29 days to 56, versus 29 to 42, so that's a little bit more of a window. The [loss of] deposit [penalty] went from 59 days to 74, so there were some small tweaks. They weren't anything significant.

Q: What was the biggest change?

A: On five nights or longer, the first penalty starts at 89 days versus 74.

Q: How does the price integrity policy factor into this?

A: With our new no-discounting within 30 days of departure, we're training the consumer to book further out, and so we don't want a bunch of space dumped back to us close in when we don't really have an opportunity to resell it. If someone's going to cancel now, with 90 days out, it gives us two more weeks to resell that space. Because remember, all bets are off the table at 30 days out. That's the motivation and the reason why we did this. And our travel agent advisory board suggested we do it. And to help travel agents sell more insurance.

Q: How many people cancel before the penalty period to get their money back?

A: I don't think it's many. I think it's a small percentage. But that's why we encourage travel agents to urge consumers to buy travel insurance.

The ‘horrible mess’ of shore excursions

By Tom Stieghorst

Cruise lines are starting to see declines from one of their most important revenue streams, shore excursions. That was one of the admissions made by newly named Royal Caribbean International President Michael Bayley at a forum for agents onboard the Freedom of the Seas.

Bayley gasped in mock horror after asking the group of about 250 agents whether they sold Royal Caribbean’s branded shore excursions or somebody else’s. In unison, they chanted “Somebody else’s.” When he asked for a show of hands, well over half the group responded.

“You know, we do have to change the system,” Bayley said in a half-joking, half-serious tone. “It’s a horrible mess.

“We must spend more time talking about this than I don’t know what else,” Bayley added. “We’re always trying to find the right solution.”

Elliott Finkleman, owner of an Expedia CruiseShipCenter outlet near Ottawa, said both Royal Caribbean and travel agents could make more money if Royal paid a commission on excursion sales.

“You’re losing out because it forces me to sell alternate product,” Finkelman said. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time on shore excursions, going port by port, and get nothing back from that.”

Vicki Freed, Royal’s senior vice president of sales, trade support and service, said that the line does pay commission on group shore excursions and that guests with excursion tickets sold through Royal get first priority in getting off the ship at port.

And Bayley reminded agents that there are some risks with third-party providers.

“If they’re selling at lower prices, they’re paying these commissions, chances are they do not have the same liability coverage and they have not gone through the process of safety for the guest that we go through,” he said.

Bayley said excursions have always been an important part of the cruise revenue pie.

“We all have revenue streams and we all try to protect them,” he said. “We have seen an erosion over the past couple of years, and it’s pretty obvious where that erosion is coming from, after our show of hands.”

RCCL to launch new
web-based res. system

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL) will launch a new Internet-based reservations system for retailers in March called Espresso, its first complete upgrade since it introduced CruiseMatch in 1990.

Espresso will modernize the functions that travel agents use to book cruises, making them more productive, company executive said. It will be used by all of the RCCL brands, including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises.

“Espresso will help agents focus more on their customers, rather than looking at their computer screens,” said Dondra Ritzenthaler, senior vice president for sales at Celebrity.

She said it would be a faster, more powerful, more intuitive system that will shorten the number of steps to make an online booking from seven to five.

Another feature enables agents to compare up to four potential bookings at one time.

Espresso will be optimized for mobile phones and tablets, which is important to home agents visiting clients, said Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean’s senior vice president of sales.

It will have a robust function for providing past guest information, she said.

RCCL will hold a series of in-person training sessions in six cities around the country in February and March before launch. There will also be webinars, a three-minute instructional video, and an online site that simulates Espresso, at www.espressocbt.com.

Royal plans to run Espresso concurrently with Cruise Match for three to four months to enable agents to get up to speed.

CruiseMatch was launched as a GDS system in 1990 and converted to be primarily Web-based in 1998, with further upgrades in 2007 and 2009.