What’s In This Issue:
- From the Bridge – Don't let the ship sail without you - register now to attend cruise3sixty; prepare your promotion for the World's Largest Cruise Night .
- Cruising in the News – First-Quarter Passenger Numbers reveal continued growth…Fashion in Focus as Essie launches Cruise Collection … NYC Cruise Terminal Web site debuts…Pre- and post-cruise attractions New Orleans is an ‘Easy' sell for agents
- Maximizing Membership Benefits– Cruise Marketing Essentials Workbook and CD feature complete National Cruise Vacation Month and World's Largest Cruise Night promotional tools.
- We Thought You Should Know –– Galveston exhibit highlights maritime past as city enjoys bright cruise future.
July 2005
From The Bridge
Greetings!
CLIA's 19 member cruise lines recently reported passenger totals for the first quarter of 2005 (see story below), and the figures confirm what industry observers have been saying for months: demand for cruise vacations remains as strong as ever.That means more vacationers than ever are enjoying the unrivalled pleasures and tremendous value that are standard features of the cruise vacation experience, thanks to your hard work, and the cruise lines' inventiveness and innovation.
CLIA is also working to help your agency market and sell cruises more profitably, and to provide you with the resources you need to deliver the latest cruise information to your clients. To that end, cruise3sixty - CLIA's first-ever travel agent trade event and conference, scheduled for Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 in Fort Lauderdale - will emphasize travel agent training.
In fact, agents who attend cruise3sixty will can earn up to 115 CLIA Cruise Counsellor Certification credits, which can be applied to CLIA's Accredited Cruise Counsellor (ACC), Master Cruise Counsellor (MCC), Elite Cruise Counsellor (ECC) and Elite Cruise Counsellor Scholar (ECCS) certification levels. Agents must register for and complete cruise3sixty's “Institute Track” to earn the maximum 115 credits.
With in-depth seminars, hands-on learning at the Technology Center, and lively presentations including a “Geography Bowl,” cruise3sixty's Institute Track will allow agents to satisfy mandatory and elective training requirements for ACC or MCC designation, as well as earn credits toward ECC and ECCS designations. Travel agent registrations and hotels at cruise3sixty are booking up fast – make sure you register soon before cruise3sixty is a sell-out!
cruise3sixty will also launch a fall season filled with innovative CLIA cruise promotions, including the new National Cruise Vacation Month (NCVM). The highlight of NCVM will be the “World's Largest Cruise Night” (WLCN). For the first time, travel agencies across North America will join together to host Cruise Nights, cocktail parties, luncheons and a myriad of cruise promotional events – all on Oct. 19 .
Your agency's participation in this one-of-a-kind promotion is crucial. With hundreds of cruise events occurring on a single day, WLCN will attract widespread media attention, and translate into increased consumer awareness of cruising and drive sales for your agency . Agencies can register their WLCN event in the Travel Agent center of CLIA's Web site ( www.cruising.org ). The site also features tips, hints and resources to help make your event a success (more on this later).
To locate other WLCN events taking place locally and/or regionally, consumer will be able to utilize the World's Largest Cruise Night Locator on the home page of CLIA's Web site. By entering a zip code into the search field, users can find scheduled events in their region, along with contact information to inquire about attending a local WLCN event.
A final note: by now your agency should have received its complimentary copy of Cruise Thirty , CLIA's first-ever commemorative magazine, which celebrates the association's 30 th Anniversary. Cruise Thirty takes a fond look back at CLIA's development over three decades, and also chronicles the history of the modern cruise industry and the important role travel agents have played in its growth and success.
Please enjoy CruiseThirty and feel free to contact me your opinions and comments on this exciting CLIA publication.
Bon Voyage!
Terry L. Dale
President & CEO
CLIA
Strong First-Quarter Passenger Totals Point to Continued Growth
CLIA ships carried nearly 3 million guests in the first three months of 2005
Strong demand for seagoing vacations continued in the first three months of 2005 as
CLIA-member line fleets carried 2.63 million worldwide guests in the first quarter of 2005, an 8.9 percent increase over the same period in 2004. North American passengers grew by 12.9 percent to 2.34 million guests, up from 2.10 million first-quarter guests a year ago.
CLIA-member cruise lines also posted impressive occupancy figures, with a 104.3 percent occupancy factor in the first quarter of 2005 compared with 103.3 percent for the year prior.
CLIA's first-quarter passenger carryings report also found:
Itineraries of 1 to 5 days accounted for a 31.7 percent share of the cruise market; itineraries of 6 to 8 days accounted for 54.3 percent; 9 to 17-day itineraries accounted for 13.7 percent and itineraries of 18 days or longer accounted for .4 percent of the market.
The average length of a cruise in the first three quarters was 7.33 days versus 7.09 days for the same period in 2004.
“The strong passenger totals provide further evidence of the fertile consumer interest and demand for cruise vacations,” said Dale. “The positive results are also testament to the hard work and productive efforts of CLIA's 16,500-plus member travel agencies.”
CLIA Focused on Fashion as Cruise Collection Sets Sail
Essie Cosmetics founder and President Essie Weingarten joins CLIA President Terry Dale aboard Carnival Legend for the “Cruise Collection” launch
The swank world of fashion held court aboard Carnival Cruise Lines' Carnival Legend recently, as Essie Cosmetics Limited joined with CLIA to launch Essie's Cruise Collection , a line of six fashion nail polishes created with cruising in mind, aboard Carnival Cruise Lines' Carnival Legend, moored at the New York Cruise Terminal.
Appropriately, the Cruise Collection features whimsical summer shades inspired by CLIA-member cruise lines and will be carried in 55,000 salons, spas and specialty boutiques on cruise ships as well as on land. Essie's nail polishes are anything but your average custom finger paint. They adorn the celebrity fingernails of Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Anniston, Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman, to name a few.
The Cruise Collection consists of Carnival Cruise Lines' Fun Ships (a soft pinky red with a gold infusion); Costa Cruises' Magnifico (iridescent soft light fuchsia); Norwegian Cruise Line's Jewel (shimmery raspberry) and Princess Cruises' Princess Pink (glistening soft cotton candy pink). Other colors in the collection include Life Saver (a strong glittery orange) and Cruise Control (warm tulip pink).
Essie and CLIA are also sponsoring a Cruise Collection sweepstakes contest open to consumers across North America. Top prizes include cruises for two aboard a Carnival, Costa, Norwegian Cruise Line or Princess ship.
Consumers can enter by obtaining a ballot found in point-of-purchase displays at Essie outlets carrying the Cruise Collection, or by logging onto Essie's Web site at www.essie.com , clicking on “Click Here for More Information” and filling out an online entry form.
NYC Launches Cruise Terminal Web Site
New York City officials recently launched www.nycruiseterminal.com , a Web site for consumers and travel professionals, as part of a $200 million initiative that will accommodate the Big Apple's burgeoning cruise business through the construction of six modern cruise berths and two new terminals.
Under a master plan announced last year, New York City's historic but outdated New York Cruise Terminal in Manhattan will undergo a major renovation and a new terminal will also be built across the East River in the borough of Brooklyn. Spearheaded by New York City's Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the projects are already underway and will help CLIA-member cruise lines meet surging demand for cruises from New York.
According to EDC officials, all six berths – four in Manhattan and two more in Brooklyn – will be available for use by 2035. The New York Cruise Terminal (previously know as the New York City Passenger Ship Terminal) is now the country's fourth-busiest, with 845,788 passengers utilizing the facility in 2004. Embarkations grew by more than 30 percent in both 2002 and 2003. The number of guests utilizing the terminal is expected to grow to 1.17 million by 2010, a 6.4 percent annual growth rate. Between 2010 and 2020, passenger totals are expected to reach 1.5 million at an annual growth rate of 2.8 percent.
Specific improvements at the New York Cruise Terminal will include:
New Aprons - The piers will be reconstructed with wider aprons allowing the truck traffic associated with provisioning to take place on the outside, rather than the inside, of the building. An application will be made to extend the terminal's mooring capacity further into the Hudson River so that a 1,200-foot-long berth, large enough to accommodate the Queen Mary 2 and other ships that extend over 1,000 feet, can be built.
Gangways. The new aprons will also provide for new gangways as needed to reach ship doors within current norms.
First Floor. With ship provisioning taking place outside the building, the existing first floor will be used for guest and luggage disembarkation and a new processing area for federal agencies, eliminating the need to move luggage to the second floor of the terminal. The first floor will also be used for ground transportation and as a provisioning logistics area.
Second Floor. The second floor will be fully dedicated to guest check-in, security, embarkation, amenities and offices.
Roof. The roofs of all three piers will continue to offer guest parking. New features will include access elevators, escalators and stairs.
Access. New access improvements will include off-site taxi stands, curb improvements and strategies to eliminate conflicts between the bikeway and pedestrian path adjacent to the terminal and terminal traffic. An overhead pedestrian bridge across the West Side Highway will be pursued with city and state transportation authorities.
Meanwhile, the new Terminal at Pier 12 in Brooklyn, which is slated to open in the second half of 2005, will include:
A single-level terminal with separate embarkation and disembarkation areas.
Areas for passenger processing by federal agencies .
Growing Cruise Traffic Across U.S.V.I.
Cruise-ship visitors to the U.S. Virgin Islands experienced strong first-quarter growth, according to figures from the V.I. Economic Bureau and reported in The Virgin Islands Daily News . The study reports that while the region experienced fewer cruise-ship calls overall compared with the same period in 2004, “the territory is maintaining its strong passenger count because the ships are bigger.” During January and February 2005, St. Thomas/St. John welcomed 433,102 cruise passengers, a 1 percent increase. Meanwhile, a total of 12 cruise ships called at St. Croix during the same period, bringing 20,620 guests compared with none for the same period on 2004. A handful of cruise ships recently returned to St. Croix following years during which the island was absent from cruise charts.
La Grange: “Easy” To Sell Crescent City Cruisers on Pre- and Post-Voyage Stays
New Orleans is clearly an ascendant cruise-ship port, boasting a diverse group of year-around and seasonal deployments, sought-after itineraries and attractive pre- and post voyage activities. With several cruise-ship terminal projects underway, it's no surprise that New Orleans is experiencing growing cruise-passenger totals and broad economic benefits.
Speaking last month at a Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) conference at New Orleans' Chateau Sonesta Hotel, Port of New Orleans President and CEO Gary LaGrange told an audience that cruise guests spend almost three times as much money each day in New Orleans as in other North American ports. New Orleans hosted 734,643 cruise passengers in 2004, a 24% increase over 2003 totals. La Grange said more than 55 percent of vacationers who sail from New Orleans drive to the port and are strong candidates for pre- and post-cruise stays.
Beyond the Crescent City's signature cuisine and music are a wide range of pre- and post-cruise options, including the National D-Day Museum, which this year celebrates its fifth anniversary.
The museum opened on June 6, 2000 as the only U.S. museum to feature all of the amphibious invasions (or “D-Days”) of Word War II and pay tribute to the more than one million Americans who took part. The facility was designated as “America's National World War II Museum” by the U.S. Congress on Sept. 25, 2003. The museum is located in New Orleans because the amphibious landing craft used in the invasions were built in the city's shipyards.
The National D-Day Museum is also sponsoring an “Italy and Word War II” cruise from Oct. 16 to 23. The voyage will feature a distinguished team of historians and authors, plus World War II veteran Sen. George McGovern. The special D-Day voyage is commissionable to travel agents. For more information, call 877-813-3329 or e-mail travel@ddaymuseum.org .
WLCN and NCVM Resources Available OnlineCLIA-member agencies eager to launch attention-grabbing promotional events to tie into CLIA's National Cruise Vacation Month (NCVM) and World's Largest Cruise Night (WLCN) promotions in October will find a complete collection of promotional tools at in the NCVM /WLCN Resource Center in the Travel Agent section of the CLIA Web site ( www.cruising.org ). Online resources include:
A bank of NCVM, WLCN and CLIA logos and taglines, with instructions and tips for usage.
NCVM and WLCN shell press releases with instructions for most effective utilization.
Public relations tips and hints to win coverage in your local/regional market.
WLCN Postcard and flyer templates.
Targeted strategies for hosting successful cruise nights.
A CLIA member-line WLCN Support Center, outlining cruise-line programs to support your agency's WLCN event.
CLIA direct marketing materials.
In addition to launching NCVM promotional initiatives, agencies can also support WLCN by registering their cruise night function in the Travel Agent area of CLIA's Web site. By registering your event, you enable CLIA to track agency participation and thereby generate national press coverage. Agencies that register also enable CLIA to promote individual events to consumers through a WLCN event locator.
Galveston Museum Highlights Maritime Past Amidst Present-Day SuccessThe Galveston County Historical Museum of Galveston, Texas is currently exhibiting “Glorious Voyage: The Age of the Ocean Liner,” a 130-piece collection of cruise- and passenger-ship memorabilia. The exhibit is slated to continue through November.
The collection dates back to 1866, but most of the items are from the 1920s to the 1960s, according to the Galveston County Daily News. The exhibits include a variety of maritime art including posters, lithographs and images from 19 th Century magazines.
Also featured are shipboard items ranging from concert programs to passenger lists, tickets and ashtrays, and a variety of ship models made from wood, metal and clay, including a four-foot recreation of the 1930s French Line liner Normandie.
A fledgling port in the early days of cruising's homeport phenomenon, the Port of Galveston has quickly become a player. Galveston recently passed the 1.5 million passenger mark, the highest annual total achieved since the port launched its first year-around sailings aboard Carnival Cruise Lines' Celebration in September 2000.
Galveston has clearly benefited from the cruise industry's homeport movement. The city hosted 377,00 cruise passengers last year, making it the eighth-largest cruise port in North America, according to statistics from the International Council of Cruise Lines (ICCL).
In addition, Royal Caribbean International recently announced that Splendour of the Seas will offer four- and five- day sailings from Galveston from November through April of this year and from November 2006 through April 2007. Meanwhile, Royal Caribbean's sister line, Celebrity Cruises will deploy Galaxy in Galveston this winter. Finally, Princess Cruises recently announced that Grand Princess will spend a third season cruising from Galveston between November 2006 and April 2007.
For more information on “Glorious Voyage,” contact the Galveston County Historical Museum at (409) 766-2340.
