Visiting a cruise line's corporate headquarters recently, Cruise Week observed an executive using Twitter to check relevant cruise postings. Peeking over the exec's shoulder to see who he was following, one name stood out – Andy Stuart, Executive V.P. Global Sales and Passenger Services for competitor NCL.
The executive observed that no individual on the supplier side tweets as prolifically as Stuart. In recent weeks Stuart has tweeted on topics ranging from excerpts of positive reviews of Norwegian Epic to NCL’s new pricing policy going into effect August 1st. In a follow-up interview, Stuart told Cruise Week that Twitter is the social medium he uses the most.
Stuart says he started tweeting at a conference a year ago, and now he's got about 1,350 followers, about half of which are travel agents. He estimates he spends about thirty minutes a day following others' tweets and tweeting himself.
Stuart says he has no great desire to have a huge following, instead focusing on ensuring he is communicating with the right people; for example, Stuart turned down an Austrian wigmaker who asked to be in his network.
In expressing the value of Twitter, Stuart says: "It's important to be engaged in the conversation. You can either be talked about, or you can talk with other followers." When negative comments are made, especially when the info is factually incorrect, Stuart says he and others at NCL have the option to engage and respond or correct facts as appropriate.
While Stuart says he can’t quantify the specific value of Twitter, he offers an illustrative example. During the inaugural two-night Epic introduction out of Miami, there were two people on board who had a total of about 45,000 followers. They posted a variety of messages about their experience and attached links to 16 pages of information. One of their followers liked the information so much he forwarded it on to his 1,000,000 followers. That's an enormous ripple effect for communication at virtually no cost.
