Not-quite-3-year-old Azamara Club Cruises would like a do-over.
Henceforth, Azamara -- which last week was given the middle name "Club" -- should not be considered deluxe but rather an "upmarket" cruise line.
It will no longer charge for specialty coffees, sodas or bottled water. Wine will be included at lunch and dinner. Gratuities will be figured into the ticket price.
And Azamara's ships are going to slow down significantly to allow for longer stays in ports and more overnights in places like St. Petersburg, Istanbul, St. Tropez and Bangkok.
The fledgling cruise line, born from, and until this summer managed by, Celebrity Cruises, is taking a new direction under its first dedicated CEO, Larry Pimentel, who took the helm at Azamara in July from Celebrity CEO Dan Hanrahan.
Pimentel, a veteran of luxury cruise lines, brought in a dedicated sales and marketing staff headed by Edie Bornstein, which Pimentel said has given the line the dedicated focus it needs to succeed.
Job One was to spread the word about an onboard product that Pimentel said earns high marks for service and itineraries.
"The most critical issue is just focused management," Pimentel said, counting off Bornstein's Azamara team and new executives in charge of hotel, sales and finance.
Azamara established itself as a "deluxe" line when it debuted, and to the vexation of its current leadership, it defined itself as a competitor to Oceania Cruises, the only other line in that category, which also operated the same type of ships.
But Azamara couldn't compete on that basis. Its prices never matched Oceania, and it was unable to create sufficient demand to change that.
In retrospect, there were many reasons that happened, Pimentel said, including that the line's parent company, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., was in the midst of a major expansion of its flagship brands.
Celebrity took delivery of the first of five Solstice-class ships in November 2008. Royal Caribbean International just took delivery of the first of two 5,400-passenger Oasis-class ships.
When it came to marketing, RCCL gave those brands and ships priority. As Pimentel noted, one Azamara ship has fewer berths than two of Oasis' lifeboats, so it made corporate sense.
"They were bringing out these larger ships that were very significant to the corporation, and corporate was really stretched," he said.
RCCL realized that Azamara needed focus as well as an executive team experienced in the upmarket space.
"We've been given great latitude to create a new direction and have policies that are not the same as our sister companies," Pimentel said.
One of his first orders of business was to hire Bornstein, who, he said, shared his approach to getting the word out to travel agents about Azamara.
The duo have already been speaking at conferences and doing webinars and plan a road tour around the country.
"We are using a guerrilla-warfare approach to sales and marketing," Pimentel said. "Edie and I both get in the trenches with agents. They have known us for years, and they are excited to see what we create."
Bornstein quickly found that agents have been keen to learn about Azamara but have not had much opportunity to do so.
"Whenever I speak, I start with questions," Bornstein said. "Have you ever sailed on Azamara? No hands go up. Have you been trained on Azamara? No hands go up. If you can't see the product and you haven't been trained on it, you have substantial challenges. It's all about communication."
Despite not wanting to be pigeonholed, several of Azamara's new qualities -- the new name, more overnights, more inclusivity -- are qualities reminiscent of the Sea-Dream Yacht Club luxury line, which Pimentel founded at the start of the decade and left early this year.
But the team is adamant that Azamara is not luxury. Nor is it SeaDream.
"This is the day and age of inconspicuous consumption," Bornstein said. "It's OK to have money, but you don't want to brag about it. ... Luxury has become more or less a dirty word. People want to spend money and not feel guilty about enjoying their vacation. When you use a more generic term like 'upmarket,' I think it appeases a lot of that."
Raising the line's prices only brings them where they should have been all along, she said, noting that it was something even travel agents had been telling them to do.
"For the agent community, their commission will significantly go up," Pimentel said. "The upmarket, boutique agencies kept telling me, 'Please raise your rates. You are so low it's not viable to sell you.' "
The two are confident they can turn around the line's fortunes.
"A year from now, when you ask an agent, 'What is Azamara?' I don't think they are going to say, 'Aza-what?' " Pimentel said. "They are going to answer that question."