Royal Caribbean tells travel agents: "Don't be afraid of digital"

There are not many people selling travel who can claim that the COVID pandemic has been good for their business.

Angie Stephen, vice president Asia Pacific with the Royal Caribbean Group, can offer 150,000 reasons why the pandemic has held plenty of upside for the cruise company.

More than 150,000 Singaporeans have taken the opportunity to sail short cruises out of Singapore with Royal Caribbean. Two-thirds of them are new to cruising. Many of them are much younger than the average age of the pre-COVID cruiser.

“A lot of millennials were checking us out,” says Stephen, who was speaking at WIT Experience in Singapore.

“Our ships make great places for Instagram-able moments. And again, young people want to use their passports, they love to travel. This was the best thing that they could get their hands on in the last 12 months.”

Which begs the question: What happens next? Will those new-to-cruising in Singapore – and in Hong Kong where Royal Caribbean has just relaunched – jump back onboard when pandemic restrictions allow?

“We are doing that research now,” Stephen says. “We cruise all over the world. As we have learned, people may not want to go to so many destinations, because it’s a hassle in this current environment.

“I think cruise will bode well, because you only have to fly to Spain, and we’re going to take you to France and Italy. There’s a great opportunity to for us to secure those guests.”

Royal Caribbean now has 18 of its ships back in operation and expects the full fleet to be sailing in the first quarter 2022.

“We’ve opened up a new audience in Asia, where all indications are that when international borders open, those who have sailed in Singapore will be keen to experience cruising in other parts of the world,” Stephen says.

Helping to secure those guests is the emergence of online retailers selling cruise, a distribution channel which has largely been missing in Southeast Asia.

One reason for this, Stephan says, is that Royal Caribbean has its focus on the cruise experience rather than the price.

“Online players want their own hook, but our brand sells at parity,” Stephen says.  

“That was one of the reasons why online retailers weren’t that interested in cruises, but let’s see what happens when general travel returns and if they want their own hook.”

Players like Klook, Trip.com and KKDay are now working with Royal Caribbean. 

“It’s interesting, how, at the beginning of the partnership with Klook, everything was done manually, so even as an established OTA, they wanted a proof of concept before they integrated with us,” she says.

“A lot of online retailers usually need a price advantage, or distressed inventory. That’s not the brand experience that we’re wanting to demonstrate. So, we’ve worked together, and using Klook, as the example, they did plug into our API, and they literally went from zero to being in our top five distribution in Singapore.”

Stephen says while the experience with OTAs “has made us look more seriously at online distribution,” traditional bricks-and-mortar agents are still very much part of the distribution mix.

“They just need to be less intimated by the digital and social space. Travel partners who are digitally selling cruises have been able to recover business and grow their cruise business faster than others who have not yet gotten into that game successfully.”

To this end, Royal Caribbean is helping traditional distributors with API integration and providing them with digital assets, instead of brochures.

“They are open to it. They know they need it, but they find it intimidating. A key to unlocking this, I believe, will be in the type of people they bring back – a lot have been in hibernation. If they bring in younger millennials to shape the future, with service that’s available 24/7 – that would be good,” she says.

Royal Caribbean Group chairman and CEO Richard Fain, in a newly released video, has also urged travel advisors to start to sell cruises again.

“The time has come,” he says, “to focus on how we come out of the pandemic, rather than how we should live during it. The time has come to look forward and do what we have done for decades, sell cruises.”

Fain says a surge of interest has come mainly via the internet rather than from travel advisors, as people became used to buying things online during the pandemic, and continue to do so, while many travel advisors cut down on staff and marketing.

Appealing to travel agents, he adds, “It was the personal contact with travel advisors that built up the knowledge and awareness (of cruising) in the first place.”

“We need you and we need your personal touch, and the clients need you to help them understand the complexity of the product.”

*This article first appeared in Web in Travel.