Tag Archives: Micky Arison

Carnival Corp.’s Arison praises agents in new ‘open letter’ ad

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Carnival Corp.’s Arison praises agents in new ‘open letter’ ad

By Tom Stieghorst
Carnival Corp. is making it personal.

In a new advertisement scheduled to appear this week in several publications, including Travel Weekly, Carnival Corp. Chairman Micky Arison spells out his appreciation for travel agents, citing their crucial role in making Carnival’s brands successful over the years.

The ad takes the form of an open letter and bears a photo of Arison and his signature at the bottom.

Micky Arison, CEOIt is an unusually direct communication from Arison, who recently stepped down as CEO of Carnival Corp. while retaining the title of chairman. In the letter, Arison also introduces his chosen successor as CEO, Arnold Donald, as someone travel agents can trust.

“Together, we will continue to work hard to exceed guests’ expectations and to position Carnival brands as your customers’ cruise lines of choice,” Arison writes.

Roger Frizell, vice president for corporate communications at Carnival Corp., said of Arison, “This is something he wanted to do as a way to reach out to the travel agent community to personally thank them for their support over the years, while also using the opportunity to introduce Arnold as our new CEO.”

The letter carries the logos of all 10 Carnival Corp. brands, clearly differentiating it from initiatives announced recently by Carnival Cruise Lines under the Carnival Conversations banner.

“The fact that it comes from the chairman says a great deal,” said Stewart Chiron, a Miami-based travel agent and a regular commentator on broadcast and cable networks.

Chiron said the letter sends a message of stability, direction and continuity at the top during a period of corporate transition.

It also reflects Arison’s genuine sympathy for agents, he said, adding, “I know his support for travel agents has been unwavering over the years.”

Meanwhile, the Carnival Cruise Lines brand continues to roll out changes built on the feedback it received in Carnival Conversations.

The latest volley is the reinstatement of a printed brochure, which was announced by Mike Julius, Carnival Cruise Lines’ senior managing director of U.S. trade sales, at the end of September.

“Travel agents have told us loud and clear that they want a printed brochure,” Julius said when making the announcement. “We’re thrilled to introduce one that is customized with the information that matters most to them.”

Although the number of pages is still being decided, the brochure will be printed in an 8½-by-11-inch format and will contain enough content to be more like a catalog than a brochure.

It will include deck plans, which agents complain are hard to share with clients in an online format, and detailed itineraries by destination as well as cabin photos, a Frequently Asked Questions page and an At-a-Glance ship-deployment grid.

Travel agents can pre-order the free brochures beginning Nov. 15 through GoCCL.com. Carnival Cruise Lines said it expects to begin shipping them late in the year, in time for the start of Wave season on Jan. 1.

Top Carnival bosses reaffirm commitment to agents

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Top Carnival bosses reaffirm commitment to agents

By Lee Hayhurst

Top Carnival bosses reaffirm commitment to agents Two Carnival bosses have reaffirmed their commitment to agents and rejected claims that moves to make distribution more efficient were an attempt to cut out the trade completely.

Speaking exclusively to Travel Weekly last week, Carnival Corporation chairman Micky Arison and new chief executive Arnold Donald (pictured) said inefficiencies in the system in the UK and the US had to be addressed.

Changes made to agent terms, automation and commission in both countries have angered some agents and Carnival has already initiated a charm offensive on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the UK, potential earning levels 
have crept back up and an Agent Matters initiative has been started.

Arison said: “Our goal was never to cut agents out or to not work with them, but to make this system more efficient so we can all make more money.

“As an operator, if you get a booking on your website, it’s efficient, but that’s a very small piece of the business. If a customer goes to an agent who has an efficient system, that’s as efficient as them calling our call centre. The worst situation is when an agent calls us because then you have two ‘call centres’ talking to each other.

“We were trying to get to a situation where the customer calls our call centre or an agent. In the UK it was also an attempt to control our pricing.”

Donald said the agent community was one of the key stakeholders he has engaged with since taking the role from Arison on July 3. “Travel agents have always been valued,” he said.

“You are always trying to tweak what you are doing to motivate and incentivise the behaviour you want so you can effectively manage costs so the money you are spending has an impact.

“There were some measures taken that aggravated [agents] and did not have the desired results but there was never a feeling that travel agents did not count or were not important.”

Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle said the commission changes in the UK were driven by travel agents themselves. “There were a number of long-standing partners who kept saying to us can’t you do something to stop us cutting each other’s throats by this competitive rebating.

“It led to this massively inappropriate behaviour of customers shopping around and agents finding it impossible to close the sale. Some agents were cutting away so much they had nothing to sustain themselves and we lost control of pricing as a result.”

The Venice ‘squeeze’ that wasn’t

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The Venice ‘squeeze’ that wasn’t

By Tom Stieghorst

*InsightReturning from Italy after a week on the Carnival Sunshine, a group of us were waiting in an airport lounge when suddenly what should pop up on the television monitors but the Carnival Sunshine.
It was some kind of news story. But none of us understood Italian, so it wasn’t until I got back to the U.S. that I caught up to the tale.

An Italian newspaper had reported that the Carnival Sunshine, on its way through the Giudecca Canal in Venice, had passed within 20 meters of the shoreline, squeezing a vaporetto water taxi in the process.*TomStieghorst

The story was based on comments from a Venetian environmental minister who said witnesses reported the incident to him. He was quoted as wondering about the reason for this “sail by,” inferring both that there was some sort of salute to Carnival Corp. Chairman Micky Arison, whose yacht was docked nearby, and some similarity to the tragic circumstances of the Costa Concordia sinking, which was caused by an unapproved sail-by of the Italian island of Giglio.

It isn’t often one is in the position to know first-hand about a story halfway around the world. And yet in this case I was on the Carnival Sunshine as it arrived in Venice.

Moreover, I was watching from the starboard side, where the squeeze allegedly took place. I can say there was no deviation from a straight course, no audible warning from anyone on the water and no comment from any of the scores of passengers on deck that something was amiss.

Carnival said the ship passed no closer to shore than 70 meters at the point of dispute. The cruise line said the local harbor pilot and the Italian Coast Guard confirmed that, as did the ship’s voyage data recorder.

So why the uproar?

Carnival and other cruise lines have been targets of a campaign to stop ships from sailing past St. Mark’s Square on their way into Venice. Posters and banners supporting No Grandi Navi (no big ships) aren’t to be found everywhere in Venice, but they’re not hard to find either.

Inevitably, the story alleging a close brush with shore got shoehorned into that narrative: that cruise ships are dangerously big and cruise lines are not to be trusted.

And, of course, the shadow of Concordia still hangs over all things cruise in Italy.

There might or might not be sound reasons to reroute cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal. But hopefully any decision will be based on the merits and facts, not on allegations about something that was really nothing.