By unanimous vote of the MAST Travel Network's Board of Directors, Carnival Cruise Lines will be dropped as a preferred supplier as of January 1, 2013, according to MAST President John Werner.
The Board acted upon the recommendation by Werner "after learning that the elements of a preferred supplier relationship for which MAST members rely on for marketing and sales support would not be available to MAST in 2013," MAST said in a statement.
"MAST has had an agreement with Carnival Cruise Lines from its first years as a cruise company and learned how to sell cruises from its executives, sales teams and trainers for decades," Werner said.
“Carnival Cruise Lines is an iconic brand in the travel industry. The vision of its leaders in those early years created an entire new segment of vacation travel and I can’t imagine the travel business without the cruise industry. However, Carnival’s business strategies have changed and for MAST, those strategies no longer fit our business model," Werner said.
MAST Travel Network is a travel agency consortium and marketing group serving agents in the Midwest with over 200 agency members in ten states and Canada. Carnival has not commented on the move.
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