Mark Conroy
Mark Conroy was recently named managing director, the Americas for Silversea Cruises. He is well known to luxury travel agents. For two decades, he was president of the Regent Seven Seas brand before opening a consulting practice in 2013. As Silversea settles into its new Miami offices and gears up for delivery of the Silver Muse ship in 2017, Conroy spoke with cruise editor Tom Stieghorst about his new role.
Q: What are your duties in your new job?
A: I'm responsible for the whole North American operation. Marketing and sales are the priority, and we have things like the shore excursion department, and we liaison with operations both here and in Monaco. And then, last but not least, there's guest relations, customer relations, customer service, those sorts of things. But my real focus is on sales and our partnership with our travel agents and partners.
Q: What is your marketing message?
A: The challenge we have is that capacity-wise we're a little bit bigger than our competitors or we're about the same size, but we've got eight ships. So it's a little complicated story to tell to the agents and then to help the agents tell to consumers. And we've got two very complementary but distinct businesses: the classical ships and then the expedition [ships], which is exciting but is a little more complicated.
Q: What's different about marketing expedition cruising?
A: It's finding the customers who are interested and the agents [as well]. A lot of it comes from agencies that sell our other product, but there are also a lot of people who specialize in expedition. We address those two groups differently, because for the traditional agent who has a Venetian Society [Silversea's loyalty program] customer, we need to provide all the information to them about what's similar but also what's different. There is an overlap, but there are also unique customers in both. We have a couple of specialists that concentrate ... on those accounts that specialize in expedition only, and they also help those regional directors to educate their travel-agency customer base.
Q: What makes the expedition side worth the trouble?
A: Well, it's a great business. It's very distinctive. It is a good-sized business and very profitable. It extends our brand, and for those Venetian Society customers who are interested, it keeps them with us instead of forcing them to have to go with somebody else.
Q: What have you been doing since you left Regent?
A: I did almost a year with CLIA, helping them to reorganize the agency membership program ... and I also did some consulting for a couple of small cruise lines and some private equity funds. So I've stayed on top of the cruise industry from the outside.
Q: What's changed in the luxury segment?
A: It's better than it was when I left! I should say it's continued to improve. The other thing that's happened is there's a lot of additional capacity coming onto the market, with our Muse and what Crystal's doing and others.
Q: Is it odd to be at Silversea after heading Regent for so long?
A: I competed with Silversea from the time I started at Regent, so it's kind of interesting to be on the other side. Obviously [Silversea's] point of differentiation is the 300- to 500-passenger ships versus [Regent's] 500- to 700-passenger ships. The ships are [more] spacious, and personal service is a little easier at the smaller size.