A comprehensive sales restructure has been completed to better equip key cruise brands — P&O Cruises Australia, Holland America Line and Seabourn — to provide ‘heavy duty support’ to travel agent partners across Australia.
Under the ambitious hybrid structure, major travel partners will continue to have strong face-to-face contact with key account managers with the backing of a team of in-house specialists with formidable experience and skills.
Ryan Taibel, Vice President of Sales at Carnival Australia, said travel partners with businesses at the epicentre of cruise tourism would particularly benefit from the combined face-to-face and behind-the-scenes elements of the new sales structure.
“The new structure puts us in a better position to leverage the skills and expertise of people in the business, many of whom have dedicated much of their working lives to growing the cruise business and giving travel partners every opportunity to excel,” Mr Taibel said.
“We have people who have each spent more than 15 years supporting our business and the cruise sector giving us an unparalleled level of experience.
“This doesn’t involve a return to the Complete Cruise Solution model from a decade ago, but it does have a shared objective of putting travel partners at the forefront of everything we do in terms of well directed sales support.”
As a result of the new arrangements, P&O Cruises Australia, Holland America Line and Seabourn will each have dedicated Key Account Managers,including Christine Oliver and Helen Courias at Holland America Line and Anastasia Kotinidis and Jennifer Compton at Seabourn.
Angus Mackay remains Key Account Manager for P&O Cruises Australia, which will continue investing in its Sales team to ensure that it can best support its valued Trade partners.
All of the Key Account Managers, including Belinda Clark in New Zealand, will report to the Head of Sales Andrew Thwaites who has 15 years of experience upon which to draw in support of the sales team.
Dedicated Sales Support functions for the three brands will report to Head of Sales Operations, Alex Pikardt, who has 12 years of Sales experience with Carnival Australia.
The new arrangements also reflect the desire of Holland America Line and Seabourn to uncouple in order for each to take different commercial paths to grow in the region.
Irrespective of size, travel partners will have access in one way or another to the skills and service that sit behind our new structure.
“We are operating in exciting times with the restart of cruising in our region as we work to rebuild Australia’s $5 billion a year cruise industry,” Mr Taibel said.
“Our new sales structure is deliberately far reaching to put our brands in the best position to succeed in the new environment and to share their success with our highly valued Trade partners."
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