Princess Cruises became the first brand outside of the Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. family to introduce the ability for its passengers to shop for flights with real-time availability, competitive airfares and immediate confirmations.
The question is whether travel agents will use it. Princess' new program, Princess eZAir, is similar to Choice Air, the air program introduced by the brands of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. last August.
Like Princess' program, Choice Air enables passengers to choose airlines and flight times and to shop for the best published fares.
"We've modernized our air program to give our passengers full control of their flight arrangements," said Jan Swartz, Princess Cruises' executive vice president.
The programs also offer what Princess calls next-port protection, meaning that the cruise line will get passengers to the next port of call in the event of flight delays. Princess noted that no major online air-booking website offers that feature.
The introduction of both programs is a response to criticism that traditional air-sea programs have generally offered contract rates higher than published fares, making air-sea program utilization relatively low. In addition, cruise passengers usually didn't know what airline or flight they would be on until close to the sailing date.
Princess would not say what percentage of its customers currently book air with the cruise line but said it was a minority.
Princess eZAir, and Choice Air before it, operate more like online websites that sell air but with added protection.
Despite these major improvements, Royal Caribbean International CEO Adam Goldstein has said that Choice Air utilization is much lower than the line anticipated, especially, he said, since it matches the best the market has to offer, along with opportunities the lines can present through negotiations with the carriers and downline protection.
"It's hard to imagine what would be better than that," he said.
Goldstein said that after discussions with Royal Caribbean's travel agent advisory board, he determined that the underutilization was a communications issue.
"We haven't done a good enough job on advising our travel agent partners on what this program is and how positive it is for our guests," he said.
Travel agents agree these are good qualities, but many cite the programs' noncommissionable aspect as the problem.
"We do not utilize the Choice Air program because we would prefer earning a commission on our air sales through consolidators," said Anthony Adler, CEO of Cruise and Resort Inc. "We would have more interest if we were compensated."
Almost all the major cruise lines, with the exception of MSC Cruises, stopped paying commission on air in 2007, saying that adding commissions prices them out of competition.
Princess thinks utilization of eZAir will be high, citing in particular the next-port-protection component.
Both lines protect passengers who buy air through their programs. A difference between the programs is that Princess is not charging an extra fee to use it. Choice Air carries booking fees of $15 per person for domestic air and $25 for international.
Princess' program is in operation now for cruises departing after Sept. 1. The line is working hard to get the word out.
Princess already introduced a Princess Academy course on eZAir and said that promoting it was a priority.
"Our program is different in that it's totally integrated within all of our existing systems: Polar Online, Princess.com, etc," Swartz said. "We have many plans to market these new products to travel agents and consumers, which all began yesterday. And we are already seeing new air bookings."