Expedia Cruises, a full-service leisure travel agency that
is part of Expedia Group, is boosting its focus on technology as it aims to
provide an omnichannel strategy that can meet the needs of all travelers.
Company executives shared highlights of its efforts during
the opening day of the Expedia Cruises 2021 Virtual Conference, a three-day
event for its network of franchisees and vacation consultants.
In the coming months, Expedia Cruises will roll out a new “info
site” intended to give cruise shoppers information about what is on board the
ships, what is included in the cost and the types of experiences they can have
at each port.
“We’re focusing on cruise in a big way, and it’s a long-term
focus for us. We want to be the leader in digital experience and content, the
leader in supply and transparent pricing, the leader in service and trip
management...,” says Greg Schulze, senior vice president of transport and cruise
at Expedia Group.
The new site is part of Expedia Cruises’ omnichannel
strategy, launched in late 2020, that brings all cruise content into one
platform that gives travelers options to do their own research and booking or
to connect to an agent that they can interact with online or in-person. Since last
year when Expedia Cruises closed its Las Vegas call center, all phone calls are
directed to local Expedia Cruise retailers who can provide personalized service
and even meet with travelers face-to-face.
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Schulze says the goal is “to ensure we give our travelers a
best-in-class experience, whether that’s a cruiser who prefer a face-to-face
approach with an agent... or maybe it’s a first-time cruiser who prefers to
start online and then they are going to pick up the phone, they have some
questions, we can do that too.”
Along with solutions to simplify and personalize the
experience for travelers, Expedia Cruises has been updating its technology for agents
to make better use of Expedia Group’s full capabilities – part of a transition
that has been happening since 2013 when Expedia Group took full ownership of
the company (formerly known as CruiseShipCenters).
Last year it began migrating its agents into Expedia Group
Partner Central, the company’s global travel marketplace, and in February it
launched new tools to make it easier for agents to filter and compare options
for customers.
Matthew Eichhorst, president of Expedia Cruises, says all of
these efforts are intended to make Expedia Cruises the top cruise agency in
North America as the industry rebounds in the next few years.
“Getting off old technology and onto the Expedia platform gives
not only the richer consumer experience but also access to that supply because
our Expedia Cruises stores do sell all travel,” Eichhorst says.
“It’s an undertaking that will take a number of years to
fully experience all of the goodness of the Brand Expedia platform, but we’ve
also made huge progress in the last 15 months, during the pandemic, because that’s
been our focus - how do we pull the band-aid off and get into the Expedia
technology.”
Cruise data
Along with discussing technology updates, Expedia Cruises is
sharing new data about bookings.
The company says the average length of a cruise bookings
jumped from nine days in the first quarter of 2019 to 11 days in Q1 2021, and
the average spend per cabin has also increased for those same periods by just
over 100% for sales through its retail stores.
Forty-four percent of new bookings in Q1 in the United
States are for departures during this year and 20% are for this summer.
And new research from Expedia Group and Wakefield Research
finds compared to other forms of travel, cruise is the only type where “travelers
from numerous countries ranked low pricing as the top value.” Also, Gen Z travelers
in North America rank environmentally-friendly policies as their second
priority after price.
Eichhorst says the company will continue to enhance the
content it provides about cruise lines’ environmental policies for travelers
and agents, and he hinted the company will be launching other communication
tools soon to better communicate “the complexity of the cruise offering.”