Carnival Celebration to Host Wide Range of Retail Collections

Carnival Celebration to Host Wide Range of Retail Collections

Carnival Cruise Line’s Carnival Celebration will host nine retail collections, including a relaunch of its sold-out 50th birthday memorabilia, according to a press release.

The retail options will include new designs as well as guest favourites, a destination-driven collection, a Carnival core-logo collection, and special retail items influenced by the ship's various entertainment venues, according to the company.

“As retailers, we saw more opportunity to connect our merchandise with our onboard experiences, so for Carnival Celebration’s collections, we really kicked it up a notch,” said Jeremy Schiller, vice president of retail operations, Carnival Cruise Line. “We know our guests want Carnival products, ship-name products, and products that remind them of where they’ve travelled to with us, and they will find all of that and much more on Celebration.”

Carnival will also offer its most broad collection of logo items in reimagined designs and styles, as well as a completely new line of customizable apparel and merchandise. In addition, the Carnival Celebration will feature a variety of new concepts developed in collaboration with partners Starboard Cruise Services and Effy fine jewellery.

The retail offerings of Celebration will be spread across the ship's six zones: The Gateway, 820 Biscayne, Celebration Central, The Ultimate Playground, Summer Landing, and Lido. Guests can explore their options when the ship sets sail from Miami on November 21, 2022.

Facebook targets travel as ‘super user’ study finds holiday posts dominate

By Travolution

A European study of Facebook’s heaviest users has found travel is the biggest vertical on the social network, equating to more than double the next biggest category.

Facebook carried out a qualitative study of 16 ‘super-users’ in the UK and Germany and a quantitative study of 3,000 regular users who have been on holiday in the last 12 months.

The firm says the activities of its top 20% of users are indicative of where mainstream users are heading next.

The research found that 42% of stories on timelines are travel-related, while 51% of users in the survey put posts about ‘holidays’ as one of their top three types, above music, food, pets, babies and weddings.

Other findings of the Facebook user survey included: 83% say they enjoy looking at photos of friends’ and family’s holidays, even when they’re not considering going on holiday 52% said when using Facebook they’d started dreaming about a holiday even when they didn’t have one planned 97% of those who go online while abroad for information use Facebook 91% of them use Facebook at least every couple of days while they’re on vacation 99% do something on Facebook when they get back from a vacation 32% of these users do so before they even get home from the airport

Tracy Yaverbaun, group director of retail, travel, luxury and fashion, said the insight had confirmed what Facebook already perceived to be the case regarding its importance for the travel sector.

“We want to build specialisms in certain industries to give value back to marketers using the platform. In the UK we did not really have a travel category until this year.

“What was happening was we were seeing much more engagement from our users that were talking about and sharing their experiences of travel.

“It’s the most shared topic. We have seen a lot of travel companies, whether it’s OTAs or tourist boards, reaching out to us.

“So we decided to redouble our efforts and put some thought into how we approach travel and we wanted to back this up with third party measurement.”

Yaverbaun said travel firms which are using Facebook with a clear end goal in mind, whether it was driving own customer acquisitions costs or finding more customers, were seeing strong results.

The report on the study highlighted Secret Escapes’ work to develop new markets using Custom Audiences, and Hotel Tonight targeting new customers for their last-minute booking app.

The former saw an 85% increase in Click Through Rate and a 20% decrease in Cost Per Click compared to desktop campaigns, while the latter had a ten times increase in click-to-install rate compared to standard mobile banner ads.

British Airways also used Facebook for its Home Advantage London Olympics advertising campaign, reaching 12.8 million people overall of which 5.8 million were reached by Facebook.

As well as Custom Audiences, Facebook has started offering Lookalike Audiences which matches firms’ existing customer profiles to users of the social network and targets them.

Andy Pang, Facebook measurement solutions group lead, said the network was most interested in driving insight from its growth markets in northern Europe.

“We know marketers talk about the five stages of travel, but we were very keen to find out how Facebook was the influencer within those five stages.

“With marketing budgets being relatively tight finding the most effective platform is a key consideration among most marketers.”

Pang said the study uncovered some interesting early examples of users in Europe starting to use Facebook’s new Graph Search functionality despite it not being fully rolled out yet.

There was also evidence that travellers use Facebook as a storage device for their holiday content like pictures.

One respondent had last their camera while abroad but because they had auto upload on Facebook they had not lost their photographs.

Pang added a number of respondents talked about Facebook as being a useful time saver because they could log in once and get access to all their applications without the need for multiple passwords.

Yaverbaun said this single view of the user was helping marketers understand how customers move across multiple devices.

“A lot of advertisers are starting to see great results from doing the right things on the platform. A lot of people are not clear about why they want to be on Facebook.

“A lot know they have to be doing something because they see others doing it, but the challenge is to show them why.

“The first things our teams ask them is what is their objective, what is the outcome they are after. A lot of firms, particularly OTAs will not invest in something until they are sure it has some sort of return for them.”

Royal Caribbean's increase in on-board revenue attributed to cruise ship revitalizations

Royal Caribbean's increase in on-board revenue attributed to cruise ship revitalizations

Oct2013

Royal Caribbean reported third quarter financial results today and the big "star" of the results was the on-board spending, with a 7% increase overall.  So what is Royal Caribbean's secret?  They think it's all about the revitalization program.

During the financial results conference call, Royal Caribbean Chief Financial Officer Jason Liberty pointed to a few key factors that are part of the fleet-wide renovations to why the company is seeing better guest spending on-board their ships.

• Speciality Restaurants
• Casino
• Internet
• Unlimited alcohol packages
• Shore excursions

"We benefited from new on-board venues introduced as a result of our revitalizations, and we saw further strength in spending from our U.S. customers, which helped generate improvement in gaming, beverage, speciality dining and shore excursions," Liberty said during the conference call.

Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein elaborated on how the company is looking to get more on-board spending, "So as I believe we mentioned earlier, gaming, beverage, shore excursions, retail and also some of the smaller revenue streams, internet has been doing well for us, which we wanted to see because we made a significant investment in, I think, 7 or 8x more bandwidth to the ships this year, and that seems to be paying off. 

So a number of the investments that we have already made, we would expect to continue to pay dividends and revenue growth into 2014 and beyond. And we continue to look under every stone for on-board revenue opportunities that don't conflict with the satisfaction of the product offering."

Basically, guests are spending more money in all these aspects and most of these venues are areas of the cruise ships that get upgraded or added as part of the revitalization program

.  

When each ship is refurbished, more restaurants are added and wifi is spread out to more areas across the ship. Add to that the new drink packages and Royal Caribbean is offering its guests more opportunities to spend money.

Young agents organize to reinvent travel retail for millennial age

By Kate RiceAS

After years of industry hand-wringing over the graying of travel agents, young travel professionals are taking it upon themselves to recruit more of their own into an industry that one young organizer recently called “sexy.”

In recent months, young travel professionals have formed a handful of industry groups — significantly, none exclusively for travel agents. They hold virtual as well as actual cocktail parties. They communicate as much by Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as by email.

And when they hold an event, be it a website launch party or a regularly scheduled monthly meet-up, the venue is packed.
Their goal is to spread the word about travel careers to a generation that grew up in an online world.

“I never knew anyone who used a travel agent,” said Karen Magee, 26, a member of the board of New York-based Young Travel Professionals and manager of hotel sales and marketing for Ultramar Travel Management in lower Manhattan.

At present, three distinct groups have been formed, though at the 30,000-foot level, they have similar goals: Each is targeting young travel professionals, and each wants to attract new, young talent to a “fun, exciting, sexy industry,” in Magee’s words.

And they’re getting a response.

California-based Millennials in Travel budgeted for 60 people to attend their launch party in Los Angeles last month and attracted more than 100, said Joshua Smith, Millennials’ director of strategic development and independent journeys manager for Travcoa.

Before the group even held the event, he got email queries from peers in Miami and Chicago interested in starting their own chapters.

“I think it’s great,” 36-year-old Ryan McGredy, president of ASTA’s Young Professionals Society (YPS) and president of Moraga Travel in Moraga, Calif., said of the mushrooming number of groups for young people in the travel industry. “It means that there are enough of us out there now to have some different ideas about how these groups can run.”

Most of the differences between the groups lie in their membership requirements and focus.

ASTA’s youth chapter

ASTA’s YPS, the most senior of the three groups, celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. But in the past year, it has undergone some radical changes.

Last summer, it morphed from committee status to a full-fledged chapter, becoming ASTA’s first chapter to not be based on geography.

“We were coming up with events, fund-raising, doing all the things that a chapter board does but without the power of a chapter,” McGredy said.

A classic example of a young travel pro, McGredy came to travel from the tech industry, finding travel, fun, interesting, challenging and lucrative.
“It’s a great business to be in,” he said. “You can make a lot of money doing it.”

Getting the word out that being a travel agent is an attractive career is one big goal, he said, as are training and networking.

Joining forces is important, he said.

“We can benefit from each other, and not just networking-wise,” McGredy said. “We are such a heavily regulated industry [that] it’s important for us to start understanding advocacy.”

Noting that federal, state, county and local governments all regulate travel, he said, “It can affect us, from making our jobs harder to raising our costs of doing business to cutting our margins.”

For example, he pointed to sequestration as a federal budget issue that could have a constraining impact on travel. A Members-Only Day in Washington last November saw YPS members going around the capital to talk to high-ranking staffers of their representatives on Capitol Hill and meeting with legislative analysts.

“People came out saying, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know that you could do this, that people care about what you say,’” McGredy recalled recently.

At the same time, YPS is addressing a gap that McGredy saw when he first entered the travel business, between the old guard’s way of doing business and young turks coming in and reinventing the wheel.

He wanted to find a way for young industry entrants to connect with their peers and also connect with the legacy of the travel industry, and he sees YPS as a way to accomplish that.

Senior members of ASTA last year voiced strong support for YPS’ efforts to become a full-fledged chapter.

Because YPS is part of ASTA, it is focused on agents, but it is not limited to agents. McGredy stressed that suppliers are just as active in the group.

Membership in YPS is currently about 400, but it changes as new members enter and as older members “age out” at 40. The only limitation on suppliers is that they cannot attend the group’s retreats, which YPS calls its “fams.” That’s because retreat sponsors want agents who will sell their destination or product on these trips.

The group says it plans to play a larger role at ASTA’s Travel Retailing and Destination Expo in Miami in September.

Young Travel Professionals

Magee said that Young Travel Professionals, a group based in New York, has three goals.

The first is relationship building. To that end, the group holds monthly events at hotels or bars as well as special events such as their website launch party in February. It has 800 members and averages about 100 attendees at its monthly get-togethers.

The second goal is career development, helping people network to find new jobs. It also encourages members to post new jobs on its Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

Allison Davis, 24, social media manager for YTP and social media coordinator of marketing for Ultramar Travel Management, said she got a job thanks to one such posting, and her involvement in YTP is attractive to employers because she’s connected to a talent pool of young people enthusiastic about the industry.

The third goal is to bring new blood to the industry. Magee said that event attendees include people from other fields such as finance and media. The group is planning a mentoring program and ultimately plans to expand to other cities.

YTP is hospitality-focused but defines hospitality very broadly. Its members include hotels, restaurants, meetings and event planners, airlines, other transportation providers, operators, agencies, online travel agencies and deal sites such as Jetsetter. It has no age requirements.

Millennials in Travel

The main goal of Millennials in Travel is career development, Smith said. It is looking at a mentorship program that pairs young professionals with one or two years in the industry with more experienced, five- or 10-year veterans.

Millennials is targeting colleges and universities to show students the value of a travel career. It’s creating a jobs board and has already seen one person change careers thanks to one such posting. Its membership is open to those born between 1979 and 2000.

“That is the millennial generation,” said Smith, who adds this group is differentiated from previous generations by the acceleration of technology and by the rise of a global economy.

It will hold elections to its board every two years and has an advisory board of high-level executives who are guiding the group.

Millennials is headquartered in Los Angeles, but the group plans to expand into Washington and Atlanta this year and into New York, Miami, Chicago, Denver and Dallas in 2014.

Its members include travel agents, suppliers, destinations, marketing rep companies and media. Because of its Los Angeles roots, the group is attracting members from companies such as HBO and Paramount, which Smith said are a part of the travel industry, though a different sector of it.

He added that Millennials is open to alliances.

LAN Airlines was a sponsor of its February launch event, giving away two roundtrip tickets.

Smith said the group’s core values were a passionate commitment to the travel industry, behaving professionally in both social and work environments, a strong belief in the potential of travel and a desire to help drive tourism on a global level.

Thomas Cook to cut 2,500 jobs

The back office roles will include staff at the head offices in Peterborough and Preston. The consultation also includes the proposed closure of the Accrington office.

Thomas Cook Group is to cut 2,500 jobs across its back office and retail network.

The group also plans to close 195 stores as part of the restucture of the UK business.

A 90 day consultation begins today over the future of 2,500 jobs, both back office and retail. The group currently employs 15,500 people in the UK.

Stores will close which do "not meet the performance targets of the business" and are in areas where Thomas Cook has more than one retail outlet. 

Peter Fankhauser, chief executive Continental Europe & UK, said:  "It is never easy to make decisions that impact directly on our people, but we also owe it to our customers to shape the business effectively and ensure that, when they book their holiday with us, our administrative costs are as low as possible.

"As we improve and develop our online capabilities, maintaining a strong presence on the High Street is an important part of our omni-channel strategy. Even after these changes we will still have one of the largest retail networks in UK travel.

He added: "It is essential that we operate with the right number of people as we move forward into the next era for our company, allowing us to meet the future needs of our customers more effectively.

"These proposals will mean a stronger Thomas Cook that continues to be a major employer in the UK dedicated to providing excellent holiday experiences to our 23 million customers. We are in consultation with our unions and employee representative bodies to minimise the impact of these changes and I am speaking personally to all employees today to provide information and support through this period of consultation."