Advantage Travel Centres is launching a new cruise marketing programme for members after seeing cruise sales revenue increase 16% year on year.
In September alone, when Advantage boosted its cruise marketing, bookings were up 20% on September 2023, which was itself up 53% on September 2022.
Speaking at the consortium’s annual Latitude cruise conference onboard Ambassador’s Ambience, Senior Cruise Manager Jonny Peat (pictured above) said cruise growth was higher than any other sector, with higher revenue too.
“At our Latitude conference 12 months ago we set ourselves some ambitious targets to reach and put in place a roadmap to grow our cruise community through Latitude.
“One year on, we have achieved everything we set for ourselves and more. Cruise continues to play a massive role in our commercial strategy and across our business, generating over £0.65bn of revenue annually and growing.
“Our members see cruise as a key area of growth for their own businesses and we are continually looking at ways we can best support them.”
Cruise now accounts for a third of the consortium’s revenue, with ocean cruises up 12% year on year, river cruises up 110%, expedition 77% and luxury 30%. “River cruise is a complete runaway train,” added Jonny.
Chief Commercial Officer Kelly Cookes said the consortium wants to become the ‘got to partner for cruise’, adding that members are being encouraged to ‘put cruise forward as an option’ to customers. “The margins on cruise are really attractive, the earning potential is infinite.”
Kelly said Advantage members typically earn 15% on a cruise compared to 10% for a basic beach booking and 12% for a touring holiday. “We are not saying let’s move all land passengers into cruise, but it is about attracting more people,” she added. “Cruise is only going to get bigger. There is so much more product coming into the market.”
To further boost members’ cruise sales, Advantage has launched a new ‘heavily subsidised’ marketing programme, with four different annual packages available for agents. The cheapest, which costs £99 per branch per year, provides agents with a quarterly magazine to be distributed to their customers; the most comprehensive is an ‘all-inclusive’ digital and print direct mail campaign.
The digital campaign enables Advantage to harvest and segment data from members’ clients, and rate them from 0-5 based on how often and how recently they’ve booked, allowing agents to create a personalised marketing programme by selecting which customer segments to target.
“I don’t believe any other travel consortia are offering this level of personalisation or segmentation,” said Head of Marketing David Forder. “I think it is pretty cutting edge for the travel industry, particularly for the consortia world.”
Currently, 141 member branches have joined the Advantage Marketing Programme, which is due to launch at the turn of the year. It plans to maintain this number for 2025 and grow in 2026.
Other initiatives recently introduced by Advantage include a cruise consumer prize draw in September, for an AmaWaterways river cruise holiday, which 36 members promoted on their social media. It attracted entries from almost 14,000 people, 5,000 of whom opted into ongoing marketing and 2,000 of whom requested a call to discuss their holiday plans.
“This competition was designed to help grow members’ customer base and showcase that they offered cruise products,” said Jonny.
Advantage also took 450 agents on ship visits, 180% more than last year, and 85 members attended its Frontliners training days in London, Manchester, Belfast and Glasgow.
“For 2025 we are planning to introduce an even more tailor-made approach, continuing to support members at the start of their journey, but also opening the next level,” added Jonny. “ For example, River, Expedition and Luxury cruising is booming, so we’ll have training events that will connect our members with suppliers depending on what support is required, beginner, intermediate and expert. These will be in person and on-line.
“We have always seen phenomenal success with our events in the past and will be rolling out more for 2025. Our community has a huge appetite for learning, and the next natural progression is for us to focus even further on delivering more events on cruise, and the sub-sectors within.
“Above all Latitude has always been about being inclusive and welcoming any member into our community, regardless of the level of experience within the sector. This approach has been core to our success and will remain front and centre of our proposition as we move forward.”
Advantage’s cruise community, Latitude, now has more than 450 members, up 52% year on year, and Jonny said he expects this to reach 600.
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In September alone, when Advantage boosted its cruise marketing, bookings were up 20% on September 2023, which was itself up 53% on September 2022.
Speaking at the consortium’s annual Latitude cruise conference onboard Ambassador’s Ambience, Senior Cruise Manager Jonny Peat (pictured above) said cruise growth was higher than any other sector, with higher revenue too.
“At our Latitude conference 12 months ago we set ourselves some ambitious targets to reach and put in place a roadmap to grow our cruise community through Latitude.
“One year on, we have achieved everything we set for ourselves and more. Cruise continues to play a massive role in our commercial strategy and across our business, generating over £0.65bn of revenue annually and growing.
“Our members see cruise as a key area of growth for their own businesses and we are continually looking at ways we can best support them.”
Cruise now accounts for a third of the consortium’s revenue, with ocean cruises up 12% year on year, river cruises up 110%, expedition 77% and luxury 30%. “River cruise is a complete runaway train,” added Jonny.
Chief Commercial Officer Kelly Cookes said the consortium wants to become the ‘got to partner for cruise’, adding that members are being encouraged to ‘put cruise forward as an option’ to customers. “The margins on cruise are really attractive, the earning potential is infinite.”
Kelly said Advantage members typically earn 15% on a cruise compared to 10% for a basic beach booking and 12% for a touring holiday. “We are not saying let’s move all land passengers into cruise, but it is about attracting more people,” she added. “Cruise is only going to get bigger. There is so much more product coming into the market.”
To further boost members’ cruise sales, Advantage has launched a new ‘heavily subsidised’ marketing programme, with four different annual packages available for agents. The cheapest, which costs £99 per branch per year, provides agents with a quarterly magazine to be distributed to their customers; the most comprehensive is an ‘all-inclusive’ digital and print direct mail campaign.
The digital campaign enables Advantage to harvest and segment data from members’ clients, and rate them from 0-5 based on how often and how recently they’ve booked, allowing agents to create a personalised marketing programme by selecting which customer segments to target.
“I don’t believe any other travel consortia are offering this level of personalisation or segmentation,” said Head of Marketing David Forder. “I think it is pretty cutting edge for the travel industry, particularly for the consortia world.”
Currently, 141 member branches have joined the Advantage Marketing Programme, which is due to launch at the turn of the year. It plans to maintain this number for 2025 and grow in 2026.
Other initiatives recently introduced by Advantage include a cruise consumer prize draw in September, for an AmaWaterways river cruise holiday, which 36 members promoted on their social media. It attracted entries from almost 14,000 people, 5,000 of whom opted into ongoing marketing and 2,000 of whom requested a call to discuss their holiday plans.
“This competition was designed to help grow members’ customer base and showcase that they offered cruise products,” said Jonny.
Advantage also took 450 agents on ship visits, 180% more than last year, and 85 members attended its Frontliners training days in London, Manchester, Belfast and Glasgow.
“For 2025 we are planning to introduce an even more tailor-made approach, continuing to support members at the start of their journey, but also opening the next level,” added Jonny. “ For example, River, Expedition and Luxury cruising is booming, so we’ll have training events that will connect our members with suppliers depending on what support is required, beginner, intermediate and expert. These will be in person and on-line.
“We have always seen phenomenal success with our events in the past and will be rolling out more for 2025. Our community has a huge appetite for learning, and the next natural progression is for us to focus even further on delivering more events on cruise, and the sub-sectors within.
“Above all Latitude has always been about being inclusive and welcoming any member into our community, regardless of the level of experience within the sector. This approach has been core to our success and will remain front and centre of our proposition as we move forward.”
Advantage’s cruise community, Latitude, now has more than 450 members, up 52% year on year, and Jonny said he expects this to reach 600.
The post Advantage looks to become ‘go to partner for cruise’ with new marketing thrust appeared first on Travel Gossip.
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