Less than 30 days into his new role as Oceania Cruises' senior vice president of sales, Brennan Quesnele launched a promotion to ignite sales in Canada as bookings for U.S.-bound air travel has dropped. He spoke with cruise editor Andrea Zelinski about his transition to Oceania from sister brand Norwegian Cruise Line, where he was vice president of strategic and national accounts, and about the strategy behind this new promotion.
Brennan Quesnele
Q: What are your plans for Oceania?
A: It sounds cliche, but I really want to use the first 90 days as a listening tour. This is a reflection of listening to our team members across the board and also to our customers. I really believe that the backbone of our businesses is the relationships. It all starts there.
Q: Oceania just had a big change in leadership with the appointment of Jason Montague as chief luxury officer for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. How are you talking to advisors about that?
A: In terms of our business and in general for the travel industry, the one thing that you can count on as a constant is change. I am leaning into that and talking about the incredible change we have in leadership and a new vision and fresh perspectives, and taking time to explain it to others. ... While that is a lot of change, and a lot of it happened very rapidly, it's telling the story about what our vision is.
Q: Oceania has a new promotion accepting Canadian dollars at par. What was behind that?
A: It's a little bit personal. I'm a Canadian. I've lived in the U.S. for the past 20-plus years, but I hold a Canadian passport. I have a green card here. This is home for me, the U.S. All my family, they all live there. At a very early age, I understood the impact of Canadian dollars at par. It's more common in the U.S. to say, "We have resident rates for Florida," for example. For Canadians, it's saying "Canadian dollars at par." At a very early age, I understood the impact. It was a way to bolster the buying power, so a really personal way of understanding a competitive environment and being able to parlay that into something that resonates with the Canadian consumer, the Canadian travel advisor and travel agencies. From an NCLH perspective, all brands now are participating in a Canadian dollars at par program, so that also shows strength to our Canadian customers, agencies and obviously the consumer.
Q: Canadian air travel to the U.S. is down significantly for this summer, and people with international status have gotten stopped at airports coming into the U.S. Is this promotion a reaction to these factors?
A: Oceania is a global cruise company, and we've got itineraries all over the world. I know Canadians love to travel, and they love to travel abroad and they love to travel far. We've really just looked at this as an opportunity to say, we understand that there is a competitive environment right now. Let's lean into what we do best, and let's put out 15% of our itineraries in the global marketplace, let's encourage Canadians to embrace travel and all the good that comes with it and let them see that Oceania is a vehicle to help them travel.
Q: What do you mean by competitive environment?
A: You talked about a lot of things that are happening. Whenever something like that happens, whether it's cruise, air, hotel, you know, a lot of suppliers choose to flood the market with aggressive offers, with aggressive pricing, aggressive promotions. For us to continue to be relevant, to be top of mind, we needed to start this program, so that's what the premise is based on.
Q: How much business does Canada provide Oceania?
A: Canada is a significant market for us. If you compare our largest source markets in the U.S. -- California, Florida -- it's very much equally important.