Cruise Roundtable
September 27, 2010 By: Ruthanne Terrero Travel Agent
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John McMahon, vice president/group publisher of The Travel Group; Ken Watson, COO, Silversea; Terri Haas, chief commercial officer for Compagnie du Ponant in North America; Rick Sasso, president and CEO of MSC Cruises in North America; Maurice Zarmati, president & CEO, Costa Cruises; Mitchell Schlesinger, vice president, sales & marketing, Voyages to Antiquity; Vicki Freed, senior vice president of sales, Royal Caribbean; Larry Pimentel, president and CEO of Azamara Club Cruises; Jack E. Mannix, Jack E. Mannix & Associates; Chris Austin, vice president of global retail, leisure and luxury sales for Starwood Hotels & Resorts; Bob Sharak, executive vice president, marketing and distribution for CLIA; and Ruthanne Terrero, vice president and editorial director for The Travel Group |
Travel Agent magazine brought together the braintrust of the cruising industry, who all spoke candidly about what agents are doing right—and wrong—in the current selling environment.
Ruthanne Terrero, Travel Agent magazine: How can travel agents be partners to the cruise lines? What can they be doing that they are not doing now?
Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean:
I don’t think it’s a one-way street. Not only can travel agents be better partners to us but we need to be better partners to them. Sure, the agent should take advantage of the resources we have at each of our companies in terms of education and local support on the business development manager level. They should also make use of our knowledge on things that have worked for other agents so that they can grow their business. We have to be partners with them, they have to be partners with us and we will all succeed.
Jack Mannix pointed out that the ones that were successful during the recession, and still are, are the ones attuned to the customer. If they focus on the customer, they will be very successful. So often travel agents tell me, “Vicki, I send clients direct mail, I am sending them e-mails,” but I ask, how often do you talk to them? And they say, “Well, when they call.”
An e-mail is a monologue but a conversation is a dialogue. You are going to be much more successful and effective in this business if you reach out to your consumer. We all know statistics, that in our industry, four out of five people that buy a cruise vacation today will buy their next cruise vacation with somebody else. It’s not because the travel agent provided them with bad service. You never want to be that kind of middle-category agent where they don’t feel a connection with you.
Reaching out to the customer and staying in touch is just good business practice. We all know that if you do that, you will be successful—you will get a lot of repeat clients because once you get them, you want to keep them. And through repeat business, you get referral business and at the end of day, it’s all about repeat referrals.
Jack Mannix, Jack E. Mannix and Associates:
If I may build on that, over the years I have spoken to all of you in many different events and on multiple occasions, I have told groups of travel agents that you would rather have a double-root canal than make calls to customers. That always gets a sort of nervous chuckle, because the reality is—and I am not really sure why— people are not proactive enough. Building that relationship Vicki just described is critical because you don’t know when the customer is going to make that decision. You have to be in touch on and off, all the time. That relationship should be the differentiator from most of the marketplace, which isn’t in touch with the customer. So if I have that bond with my customer, of course, I need to have the goods, the product knowledge and all that. But if I have the personal bond with my customer, that’s really the glue that holds a lot of the other stuff together. For the smart retailer, it’s a key differentiator. By the way, when you have that deep relationship with the customer, you also get to know them so intimately that you can decide more clearly the best product for them.
Maurice Zarmati, Costa Cruises:
Once you build that relationship with an agent and you get them to trust you and understand your brand, you have to turn around and have their offices consider taking a course itself. That’s where I think a number of us could do a better job, including myself. We don’t do enough selling seminars in agents’ offices. We are more prone to doing product seminars. I remember Larry [Pimentel, from Azamara] doing this on an ongoing basis for years. They are product-oriented and product knowledge-oriented and they want to learn more about the product, they need to learn how to get in step with the agent, how to overcome the objections and then how to ask for the sale. Invariably, they tend not to ask for the sale, those that should and they do but those that should ask for the sale because of fear of failure. It hits all of our egos when we get a no. But the more you ask, the more you sell. If we can convince them to do that we can take ourselves to the next level.
Terri Haas, Compagnie du Ponant:
I can echo all of these statements, too, especially the idea of having the personal touch. It’s very easy to send e-mails out to people and say, “hey, look what I have got to offer today,” but avoiding the personal touch—of picking up the phone and calling them—goes back to the fear of failure. Many agents are afraid to pick up the phone thinking what if they don’t want to hear from me today, would they like what I am saying? But to overcome that fear, nothing more than a phone call to your client will do. If you call up a customer and say, “You know what, I just saw this whole new French-flagged cruise line that’s really awesome and I think you would love it,” you would be a lot more successful and feel a lot more confident about continuing doing that. And to build a little bit on what you said, Maurice, not only asking for the sale but not being afraid to sell off because people are looking for value, we have all been talking about value. Sometimes that value equates to spending a little more money for a little better product at the same price. So if you can sell the value, you are going to get the customer who feels they’ve made a great purchase and they are going to keep coming back.
Ken Watson, COO, Silversea:
You’ve got to sell and the key thing is you close that sale. Once that is done, you should service that sale. What I mean is, if an agent books somebody on a cruise for 120 days out and then goes on to the next sale without servicing that booking during those 120 days, it leads to attrition. On average, attrition in our segment of business is about 35 percent, which means about 35 percent of the bookings go through normal cancellations. But a lot of cancellations also happen because the agent has not serviced their client during the period following the booking. We have done some research on this and seen that if the agent stays in touch with their client during that period, they will reduce attrition by about 10 points. And that’s money in their pockets. So, it’s important not only to make the sale, but to close the sale and then service the sale afterward.
Bob Sharak, CLIA:
Finding that new customer is of utmost importance, so you have to be greedy and smart to find the very best people [to sell]. And then you have to invest in training like we do—product training from the cruise lines and the training on the online courses and booking tools available from the different cruise lines. This is a case where I think greed is good and the agency or agent looking to get more than their fair share of the pie is the one that will benefit our industry the most.
Mitch Schlesinger, Voyages to Antiquity:
It’s a client’s world because at the end of the day, first of all, it’s about repeat clients—they are a lot less expensive to get to return. It’s disappointing when you talk to clients and find out how low their retention is. We have a significant process going on in the society to keep more people alive longer and more active—70 is the new 50. Remember 10 years ago, we were running around yelling every day about another 10,000 Americans turning 50; 10 years later, all those people have turned 60; and 10 years from now, they are all going to be 70. Around 1990, there were about 35 million Americans alive over the age of 70. In 2020, that number is going to be double. That’s an enormous opportunity because as these people age—we all know this because we have them on our ships—they travel longer, spend more money, all adding to the travel agent’s income. But this is not possible if you haven’t been able to retain the client. They are going to find somebody to book their trips for them, so you have to stick with them over time. Hence, it’s important for travel agents to hone the skills of retaining their clients as they book through the years. A smart travel agent will take their clients and guide them through the travel process, based on what they know about them. They tell them what’s best for them and help make decisions.
Larry Pimentel, Azamara Club Cruises:
Everybody has mentioned a lot of viable things from selling to relationship and the loyalty factor. But it goes back to combining the understanding of the product destination and the business aspects. Beyond that, it’s sustainability—I mean that’s the way to be viable and to grow the business. So one of the things that’s often perplexing for me and the retail agent is the home-based agent, which has kept growing. Now they’re out of the brick-and-mortar environment and work out of their homes, but many of them have great relationships with the clients. Some of those relationships are phenomenal. But dealing with the selling and closing and marketing to them with more emphasis not like by the alliance to the agents but the agents to the line participating in that dialog, I think it’s absolutely essential because now I am part of the network. But I have to tell you when you’re by yourself, you’re by yourself. And so, the industry as a whole has to do a better job of getting the important home-based agent plugged in. They have a lack of what we have as the greatest luxury—time. They are expected to do a lot of things and I am looking at that. I think the lines have to do better and those agents have to give time to webinars, trade shows and other opportunities available with the lines to plug in, where they can really learn how to sell and market better and not just about the product.
A and B equals a lot of cash if you put together the business aspect with the selling and the marketing, that’s what you get to the result and you are better for your client at the end because if you are not around, how are you helping your client?
Chris Austin, Starwood:
I would like to add a word to what Larry was saying. When he says “sell and market,” I would like to put it as “sell and market the experience.” We will have fantastic product—maybe we’re to blame for this—but I think we often match customers with the wrong product. Everybody’s product delivers a different experience and we do watch the cruise industry and learn some great lessons from it. We have nine brands and we are asked numerous times why we have so many and if they aren’t the same. I say no, because each one of them delivers a completely different experience. If you put the wrong customer with the wrong brand, you might lose them.
It’s very easy to align our brands with some of the cruise lines and marry those two experiences. So it’s almost seamless and again, it’s exceeds the expectations that the consumer has.
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