New responsibilities
Scott Knutson will remain vice president of sales for Costa USA.
Carmen Corvos Roig, formerly director of strategic alliances and key accounts, will now be director of strategic alliances.
Bill Dwyer, formerly director of field sales, will now be director of key accounts.
Ruben Perez, formerly senior vice president of guest services and revenue management, is now senior vice president of guest services.
The vice president of marketing position, formerly held by Linda Parrotta, has been eliminated. The director of marketing position, held by Wendi Mannix, will remain.
Costa Cruises will downsize its U.S. sales and marketing team from 120 to 40 employees over the next three months, and will target a smaller group of travel agents to sell cruises.
The downsizing is part of Costa's strategy change in North America, where the Italian cruise line will mainly focus on marketing Europe cruises and cease marketing the Caribbean. In the U.S., 60-70% of sales activity has been Caribbean-focused.
Costa will significantly restructure its office in Hollywood, Fla. Some positions will be eliminated, while others will be outsourced or assumed by Costa’s headquarters in Genoa, Italy.
"We will reinforce and continue to deliver the positioning that Costa Cruises is the preferred cruise line for North Americans traveling to Europe," said Maurice Zarmati, president of Costa Cruises USA. “The old model focused on the Caribbean, but with less-than-acceptable yields."
Costa's new strategy is to sell the Caribbean to Europeans, a market that produces better yields. Zarmati said that Costa’s U.S. sales reps will still sell the Caribbean, but that it won’t solicit Caribbean business in the U.S.
"When we had two ships here, we ended up using a disproportionate amount of time to sell Caribbean products at deeply discounted prices," Zarmati said. "We weren’t as efficient as we could have been. Our Caribbean vessels will be full, but not with the per diems the home office is looking for."
Costa will target a smaller number of agents, its top-producing ones, to sell cruises. Zarmati also said that Costa would target "potential producers."
"We will create a smaller group of agents that we know can sustain the goal we have attached to this model," he said.
He stressed that Costa’s top producers would be given better sales support than ever since Costa will be working with fewer agents.
To support the new sales strategy, Costa will redeploy the Costa Atlantica from Fort Lauderdale to Miami in January 2011, because Miami has more airlift from Europe.