STEIN KRUSE, HOLLAND AMERICA LINE'S newly-named
president and COO, will head up a major product and service
enhancement program at HAL that will cost $225 million and take two
years to complete. The "Signature of Excellence" initiative
includes two new dining times in the ships' main dining rooms and a
new Culinary Arts program; new mattresses and linens fleetwide;
expanding the concierge-level Neptune Lounge and the Greenhouse Spa
to all ships; and new experiences like horseback riding on its Half
Moon Cay private island. Work on these new programs is expected to
kick off at the end of the year; shipboard work will occur during
regularly-scheduled drydocks, the company said.
NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINE extended its promotion to
give agents retroactive commission on the noncommissionable, or
NCF, portion of the cruise fare, and there's good news for those
agents who increased their business this year: next year's targets
are lower. The original NCF promotion, which was introduced in
January with much hype from NCL, required agents to double their
business with NCL in order to receive 10% commission on the NCFs --
the noncommissionable category that generally includes
non-governmental and port fees. Next year, the line said NCF
rewards will be based on a sliding scale. Next year, the line said
NCF rewards will be based on a sliding scale. For example, if an
agency increased the number of NCL passengers sailing in 2003 by
100%, the 2004 growth target will be 20%. If the agency increased
NCL passengers by 75% in 2003, the growth goal in 2004 is 25%.
Agencies who decreased their NCL business in 2003 need to double
their business in 2004. The line bases growth on the number of
passengers sailed; an agency needs to book at least 25 passengers
to qualify. As an added incentive, NCL said it will count
passengers booked after Nov. 7 who sail before the end of the year
towards an agency's 2004 achievements.
NCL MEANWHILE touted its new in-house
technology that executive vice president Andy Stuart said was the
biggest systems implementation in the company's history.
"Basically, we were operating on 1984 [era] technology," he said.
Among some of the upgrades: the new system, called Freestyle
Connect, will allow res agents to search cruise prices based on
clients' age and residence, will be available 24/7 (the previous
system, Stuart said, was taken down every night for several hours)
and can apply individual clients' accounting to group bookings.
Stuart said some initial "headaches", such as glitches with Apollo
and Sabre systems, are pretty much cleared up.
TEXAS PRIDE
• The Norwegian Sea returned to Texas Nov. 7 for year-round
seven-day Caribbean cruising from the port of Houston.
• Carnival rolled out two new Galveston-based tours: one takes in
the Railroad Museum, the Lone Star Flight Museum and the Texas
Aviation Hall of Fame; the other is a "Galveston Romance and
History Tour."
CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES will hold the line on its
commission targets next year. The line said it will maintain the
same targets on its individual agency and consortium business
through 2004, despite a projected 12% capacity increase. Carnival
typically raises its pay targets to reflect its annual capacity
growth, according to Vicki Freed, senior vice president, sales and
marketing. Last year, for example, Carnival increased its capacity,
and its growth targets, by 17%. Unlike many other lines, Carnival
scores growth by passenger numbers, not by revenue.
COURT ACTION
• The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida
granted a motion by the estate of Renaissance Cruises to dismiss
ASTA's pending class action against the line, which is attempting
to recall commissions paid on cruises that didn't sail after
Renaissance ceased operations in September of 2001. ASTA filed the
lawsuit on behalf of seven of its members in July, with the
intention of having it certified as a class action encompassing all
ASTA agents in the U.S. While the ruling effectively ends the class
action, Burt Rubin, ASTA staff general counsel, told Travel Weekly
the Society's legal battle with Renaissance is not over. "We will
have to proceed with seven different cases, instead of the one
class action, which we thought would have been the better
approach," he said.
*A bankruptcy judge in Seattle dismissed the involuntary Chapter
7 bankruptcy petition that creditor Patrician Cruises' filed
against the one-ship line, Society Expeditions, and the line
stressed that it continues to operate its cruises on the World
Discoverer. The ruling in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Western
District of Washington, Seattle, found that Patrician Cruises
violated bankruptcy rules when it filed the petition, failed to
post a $500,000 bond and neglected to obtain counsel by Nov. 3.
Meanwhile, Patrician principal Bruce Fischer said that the judge
dismissed its petition "on a technicality," and that Patrician
likely will either refile the petition or pursue a collection
action in state court.
PRINCESS CRUISES canceled the first four
cruises on the Sapphire Princess, which will now debut June 13,
about a month later than the line planned. A Princess spokeswoman
said the ship is still slated for an on-time delivery from the
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries yard in Japan, but Princess had been
too optimistic about an early delivery when it put together its
2004 schedules. The line is automatically moving passengers to
sailings of the identical Diamond Princess, which offers a similar
Sapphire itinerary -- seven-day roundtrip Alaska sailings from
Seattle -- but with a departure on Saturday instead of Sunday.