It's been more than a year since Hurtigruten officially became independent of HX Expeditions, and this February marked Hurtigruten's best month ever for business. Cruise editor Teri West chatted with Hurtigruten head of Americas Carly Biggart at the Seatrade Cruise Global conference in April about the brand's evolution and popularity in the midst of global conflict.
Carly Biggart
Q: What has the journey been like since the split from HX?
A: This has given us this ability to start over. And how many times do you get to start over? You get to evaluate everything, you get to look at everything, you get to try new things, you get to throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. And I would say we probably did that for the first year, year and a half; but the last two years, we've really homed in and doubled down on what works for us. So what we learned really quickly was, from a marketing perspective, just going out and talking about promotions doesn't work for us. We are all about storytelling. We're about authenticity. From an advisor perspective, not everyone's going to Norway every day or looking for Norway all the time. And then also Hurtigruten is, first of all, hard to say and tough to remember, right? So you want to make sure when someone is looking for this product that you have confidence in what it is and the experience that you're going to be giving.
Q: Where do you think you are now with communicating who this product is for and what it is to travel advisors?
A: I feel like we are in such a better place. We've really taken a step back and developed a toolkit for advisors. We also do short snippets of videos, very digestible versus forcing a 45-minute webinar rewatch. It is really broken down into very bite-sized pieces -- "Do you know how to make a booking on the portal?"
Q: You had a strong Wave season. What do you attribute that to?
A: A lot of the [advisor] feedback that we got is, "We need help with you guys driving a bit more awareness." ... We've actually helped [raise] awareness that helps drive people to advisors. So I like that. But also Norway as a destination just has made a lot of sense for people. It's such a safe location to go to. It's accessible, it's year-round. The Olympics [helped], as well, with Norway crushing so many golds, so many medals. It kind of put Norway back on the map again. So I think it's a combination of Norway itself, and then I do feel like we're relatively synonymous with Norway.
Q: And you're seeing steady bookings still, amid the Iran war, and even a boost?
A: Yeah, we've been super solid. Our groups business is super up. So if you remember this time last year -- I don't even like talking about this month a year ago -- that's where our groups business got crushed. So many things got crushed [by the Trump tariffs], but especially groups. And groups are performing really, really well for us. I almost feel bad saying it out loud just because a lot of things coming from [the North American] market are causing this.
Q: How are you thinking about Hurtigruten's level of resilience in the face of increasing fuel prices?
A: I feel like our resilience is high. We're going to monitor everything that's going on, but our genuine hope is that we don't need to make fuel price changes that are being passed on to consumers. In the seven years that I've been in the industry, there's never been a conversation about [fuel costs], but a very real conversation, obviously, is happening now in the industry.