Tag Archives: marketing

Norwegian Targets Marketing Overhaul with New Leadership, Leaner Spend

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Norwegian Targets Marketing Overhaul with New Leadership, Leaner Spend

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is moving to rebuild its marketing function at the Norwegian Cruise Line brand, bringing in new leadership and cutting overall spending, said Chairperson and CEO John Chidsey.

Speaking on the company’s first quarter 2026 earnings call, Chidsey acknowledged that marketing underperformance has been a significant part of the brand’s occupancy shortfall, and that correcting course will require both new personnel and a more disciplined approach to how dollars are allocated.

“We are looking to bring in new leadership in marketing at NCL and better align that function with revenue management, deployment, and sales,” Chidsey said. “This work is critical and will strengthen the business over time, but it may result in some near-term variability in top-line performance as we work through these initiatives.”

NCLH recently completed a search for a new chief people officer, and Chidsey said the company is continuing to build out its revenue management team, noting that new hires across both functions have not yet fully gelled, contributing to the wide guidance range the company issued for the full year.

On the spending side, NCLH expects to reduce marketing outlays as part of a broader spending cutback.

Chidsey said the company had lost its way on marketing efficiency, saying that spend had grown disproportionate to results over the past several years.

“Our spend increased dramatically, and we’re not nearly as efficient as our competitors,” Chidsey said.

CFO Mark Kempa offered a stark data point on the inefficiency, noting that NCLH had been spending approximately twice as much per berth as competitors.

“It’s about putting the dollars to work in the right places versus volume,” Kempa said.

AIDA Cruises Looking to Fill 5,000 Positions Onboard and Ashore

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AIDA Cruises has announced that it’s looking for around 5,000 new employees worldwide for jobs onboard and shoreside. 

According to a press release, the offers are not just aimed at qualified specialists and managers.

The cruise company is also opening a broad range of career opportunities to motivated lateral entrants and young professionals.

AIDA Cruises also said that it offers a “wide variety of attractive apprenticeships for the start into working life.”

“Dedicated employees have always been part of our success. Whether on land or onboard – they are the ambassadors of our company. We not only offer varied jobs in an international working environment but also the opportunity to make a career with AIDA and discover the world,” said Vice President for Human Resources Management at AIDA Cruises Haike Witzke. “At our company, the individual skills of each person are valued, regardless of their origin, gender and religion. We encourage every motivated employee in their career planning.”

AIDA Cruises said that it offers many other incentives too. These include a company pension scheme, flexible working time models for family planning, comprehensive training and development programs, as well as attractive employee bonuses.

On land, a variety of diverse positions are currently open in the areas of IT, marketing, human resources, law, and in the AIDA Customer Center. The range of career opportunities onboard extends from the hotel business (for example, bar, reception, kitchen, restaurant) to wellness and activities (such as cosmetics, hairdresser, spa, fitness) to the care of young and grown-up guests.

AIDA Cruises said that it also offers attractive jobs in occupational groups that are not necessarily associated with cruises, such as media designers, lighting, sound or event technicians.

Google remarketing and metasearch are Travolution board’s hot tips for 2014

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Google remarketing and metasearch are Travolution board’s hot tips for 2014

By Travolution

By Travolution

Google’s new Remarketing Lists for Search Ads is already starting to have an impact on marketing budgets, according to a leading agency working in travel.Speaking at last week’s Travolution editorial advisory board meeting, Nishma Robb, iProspect chief client officer, predicted this will be one of the key trends for 2014.

She said the agency is already seeing clients increase budgets for next year but are looking at how search is interwoven with display.

Robb said the remarketing capability currently being rolled out by Google was already seeing firms focus on optimisation.

“It’s encouraging businesses to get smarter about analytics and conversion. We will now be able to prove [the effectiveness of campaigns] through technology.”

This is what Google says about Remarketing Lists for Search Ads:

“[It] provides yet another opportunity to optimise your search campaigns by letting you tailor your keyword bids and ad text for your highest value prospects – people who have visited your website in the past – when they’re searching for what you sell.”

Google estimates that conversions online run at between 2% to 4% of visits, and in travel where customers visit in excess of 20 sites before committing that figure is usually a lot lower.

A Google Think Insights post said: “In standard search campaigns, your bids, ads and keywords are the same for every search and every searcher.

“But if you knew which searchers represented higher value prospects, you might want to bid higher, show on broader keywords or present different ads to these customers to improve your results.

“Remarketing lists for search ads lets you do just that. You can use your existing remarketing lists to more effectively reach past site visitors so you can get more conversions and potentially better ROI.”

Robin Frewer, Google director of travel and finance, said the functionality will enable travel advertisers to target certain customers according to particular insight into aspects of product they have shown an interest in.

He said Customer Parameters will be “really powerful for remarketing to customers with a specific interest in specific destinations, dates or product types” and will help travel firms increase the accuracy and therefore the profitability of their advertising.

Frewer predicted that there will be a shift to measurable, performance-based marketing activity and that this has already seen more focus on brand building online, which is becoming increasingly more accountable.

Another area the board picked out to dominate in 2014 was metasearch, with this sector expected to make big in-roads into the traditional beach market.

Kayak and, increasingly Tripadvisor, are expected to have a major impact in this area the former having already launched package price comparison and started offering its own packages under a deal with On Holiday Group.

Former Traveltainment UK managing director, Andrew Nicholson, said: “There is still a lot of brand equity in the meta play.

“Players in meta dominate flights, are very aggressive in hotels and beach will be the big market they tackle next. Definitely volumes are going through the roof.”

Ian Brooks, Puregenie managing director, said he could see travel metasearch sites coming to dominate as they do in other sectors like financial services.