The relationship between retailers and cruise lines isn’t perfect, but there’s one thing the 2 can agree on - the outlook for next year and beyond has not been this rosy for quite a while.
While there's frustration with yields for fall 2014, retailers attending Signature's Owners' meeting this week were unified in the view that advance cruise bookings are unusually strong.
And we’re not just talking about luxury and river sales, which have been sailing along nicely for a while. A representative comment came from Bill Knight of All Cruise Travel: "2015 business is strong for contemporary, premium, and particularly luxury."
Signature President & CEO Alex Sharpe agrees. “It's not just premium where advance bookings are strong. On the contemporary side, we're up with Norwegian and Royal as well for next year.” Advance sales are very strong, Sharpe says. "I've been talking to partners in the premium space that are talking about turning the year at 65% occupancy."
As Sharpe notes, that used to be a luxury benchmark. "Frankly, it was a benchmark that many never achieved even in that category," he said. "So to hear a premium person with multiple ships predicting that figure by the turn of the year is going to change the way offers are and the way Wave is."
Agents were quick to contrast 2014 with 2015. Denis Lim of Vancouver’s CruiseExperts spoke neutrally of a 2014 Alaska market that failed to really impress. “Alaska this summer was constant. There wasn't a wave. People were booking right into August. There was a lot of availability, a lot of last-minute bookers. Overall, Alaska wasn't bad, we've seen better in the past years."
But post-Labour day is really when promotions start in earnest for 2015 and it's moving to an extent that Lim talked confidently of improvement: "Next year will be better. Prices are firming up and people are booking a little earlier. Already, we're getting a lot of inquiries and leads for the 2015 program."
Alaska is part of the bigger picture and one gets the impression that agents are not predicting future improvement as wishful thinking or in order to sound confident - the predictions are grounded in current booking trends.
"Based on talking with cruise lines and talking with my colleagues, and based on advance bookings, I think ‘15 is going to be a better year than ‘14," said Lim, adding: "It better be. ‘14 was better than ‘13 for us, but it was not a great year."
Sharpe concurs. “2014 has been a tough year for us with contemporary and premium," he says. "But '15 we're up in a big way.”
But while the future appears strong, many retailers expressed unhappiness with current commissions and pricing. Elaborating on the effect of weak fall revenues, one retailer specifically cited a line promoting $299 balconies for 7 day sailings.
Retailers selling both cruise and land have lamented that the cruise industry doesn't see pricing and revenue management as part of the overall branding and marketing. "They want to build the brand but meanwhile they want to make sure they get everyone on the ships even if they have low rates,” one said.
"You don't have a Four Seasons promoting $99 nightly rates,” added another.
