Royal Caribbean strengthens trade ties
Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has doubled its UK and Ireland sales force and created a dedicated trade marketing team.
The company has split national accounts between two managers – Karen Doyle and Jillian Winn – and is dedicating six major account managers to focus solely on larger independent agents known as ‘Royal Celebrities’. Additionally, there will be five key account managers responsible for managing retail outlets, call centres and hypermarkets of the national accounts and independent ‘high growth potential’ agents.
Head of marketing Kate Cleaver will now have a team of three dedicated to travel trade marketing and promotions to support the sales force. Clare Bateman takes the new position of travel trade marketing and promotions manager.
A new initiative called ‘Easy To Do Business With’ aims to ensuring the company is the easiest cruise line to work with and the choice of both agents and consumers, a statement said.
A research programme has been created to monitor the travel trade’s needs and to benchmark Royal Caribbean’s progress on key initiatives. This includes a 12-strong travel advisory panel consisting of key trade partners.
Sales and marketing director Jo Rzymowska said: “Owing to the incredible growth that we have experienced and that we are forecasting in the years ahead, it is vital that we provide our trade partners with the right level of support. As a result we have not only doubled our resources for the trade but we have totally restructured the team in order to offer even more access and focus to all our trade partners.
“2006 is a huge year for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line with our new focus on Europe and the launch of Freedom, the most innovative and largest cruise ship in the world.
“With the new strengthening and restructure of the sales and marketing departments plus the launch of “ETDBW” we can not only look forward to further increasing the ties with our travel industry partners but also have greater ability in meeting the challenges that lie ahead in 2006 and beyond.”
Report by Phil Davies
Phil Davies
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