Tom Stieghorst
Are travelers predisposed to think cruise when they get around to deciding how to vacation?
Arnold Donald hopes so. He told travel agents at Cruise360 in Vancouver that part of his job as a cruise supplier is to set the table for travel agents so that their customers want a cruise, even if they don’t know it.
“Whenever possible, I advocate for the greatest vacation that there is — and that’s the cruise,” Donald said.
The Carnival Corp. CEO made his point with an extended comparison to the 2015 movie “Focus,” starring Will Smith.
In “Focus,” Smith plays a con man and gambler. The climax of the movie is a huge bet that someone will randomly pick number 55 out of all the jersey numbers on a football field.
Smith wins the bet, and explains that he did it by conditioning the man on the other side of the bet. His journey from his hotel room to the football game is filled with subliminal references to “55,” from a lapel pin worn by the hotel doorman, to a picket sign in a phony labor protest en route.
Smith explains that the Chinese gambler even interprets the background vocal of a Rolling Stones song he hears (“woo, woo”) as the number 55 because the word for 5 in Mandarin sounds like wu.
When it comes time to pick a vacation, “we can help pre-condition our clients to think cruise,” Donald said, through advertising, trade and consumer press references, and partnerships with well-known chefs or products.
“We need to tell our story in some way, every day, so that when your client shows up asking about a vacation, they’re thinking ‘55’ — that is, they’re thinking about a cruise as a possibility.”
Then, Donald said, it’s up to the travel agent to match their customer with the best ship, the best line or the best itinerary for them, knowing that the initial choice of what kind of vacation to take is in the bag.
That’s the theory, at least. Donald said the challenge, in many cases, is to change people’s misconceptions about what a cruise is. So ads that show ships as active, spacious and stable in the water are softening up people who just don’t think a cruise is for them, Donald said.
“Every day, with everything we do, we are sending the message that cruising is a great travel option for people like them,” Donald said.