When the 2015 Travel Industry Survey asked travel agents what they most valued from suppliers, responses varied widely based on the business model and sales volume of the agency. Senior Editor Tom Stieghorst spoke with Norwegian Cruise Line President Andy Stuart about how Norwegian markets to disparate types of travel sellers.
Q: What do agents want from Norwegian, and does it vary by type of agency?
Andy Stuart
A: It varies greatly. ... The needs of small home based agencies are different from brick-and-mortar agencies and different from those predominantly online. We offer a great deal of different levels of support depending on agency need, size and style. These include business partnerships through our ... field business development managers, online tools through our marketing headquarters, one portal (NorwegianCentral.com) through which partners can access a wide range of tools from our booking engine to education through NCL University. ... We work very hard to offer different ways for agents to engage directly with our leadership team, through live and recorded webinars to social media.
Q: The research shows that established, higher-earning agents place the most emphasis on overrides and other monetary incentives, while home-based agents put fam trips and education at the top of their list. How do you target each group effectively?
A: We're trying to set up the sales team a little differently to meet the different needs of travel agents. So we've dramatically expanded the field-based team, who have for the most part been with the more traditional brick-and-mortar agent. They're out in the field. They're based on location, and they're going into storefronts and having a traditional sit across the desk, look you in the eye, figure out how we're going to do business together.
That's fairly straightforward. We know who they are; we know where to find them.
Q: What about the home-based agent? What is the strategy for reaching them effectively?
A: The home-based agent is more difficult, because they're a little harder to find. Some of them are part of a host who may or may not want to give us the full information about who they are.
I think the home-based groups are getting more likely to support giving us more information so that we can more effectively support the home-based agent. So we now have people based in the Miami office who are dedicated to home-based networks, and most of the work they do is on the phone because it's very hard to go door to door to someone who is based at home.
We combine the efforts between supporting their host or the headquarters and doing a great job of getting materials and information so that the home-based network can get it out to them and then having a team based in Miami, who are wherever possible using information we're getting through using a secondary phone field. ... So they can book through the home-based network, get any benefits associated with that, but they can also put in their own reference number such that we can track business from individual home-based agents.
Q: Our survey found that fam trips and educational materials are very important, especially by smaller agencies. Is that true for Norwegian agents, as well?
A: Experiencing the product is critical. I have not seen a survey yet that does not highlight direct product knowledge as one of the key reasons that travel agents become advocates. There is nothing like firsthand knowledge to get agents excited about the product and through that excitement and enthusiasm to become advocates and ultimately strong sellers of Norwegian Cruise Line.
"There is nothing like firsthand knowledge to get agents excited about the product." -- Andy Stuart
Q: What are you doing to make them more effective?
A: [NCL University] has tremendous engagement with travel partners and is fundamentally all about education, [with] courses about all elements of our product from the ships to the destinations. We are now planning a major revamp to ensure that we keep this vital tool for our partners both relevant and exciting. We are once again [showing] our new ship to as many travel partners as possible.
This is on top of our expanded seminar at sea program, expansive Let's Do Lunch program and very strong reduced rate program where travel partners can pick a date that works for them to experience our product.