Men are better than women - says top woman

To the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington yesterday, where the great and the good of the female variety met for the Association of Women Travel Executives summer lunch.

Your correspondent was invited into the inner sanctum to host an interview on-stage with Carol Marlow, president and managing director of luxury cruise company, Cunard, and member of the Carnival Cruise board in the UK.

Distinctly un-Travolution territory, in more ways than one, but a rather enjoyable event.

One of the guests over lunch explained to me why women conduct business in different ways then men - more considerate, creative, social.

Roll on an hour or so and my final question to Marlow: "What kind of company would Cunard be if it had a man as its president and managing director?"

After bluffing a bit, Marlow made the sisterhood scratch their heads slightly, when she said:

"It would probably be better run."

Her ongue was probably planted very firmly in her cheek, but it was a funny moment.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

CruisePricesCompared.com - Open Thread

It's going be a bit light on the blogging front today, so here's an open discussion for the new Cruisepricescompared.com site, which launches today.

The site has been created, according to Travel Weekly, so that travel agents can list their cruise deals direct to consumers. It's free for agents to list the deals and is a simple referral system (a bit like Cheapflights at a basic level).

So what do people think of the concept, and of the site itself?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution Summit - panel videos!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Consumer behaviour could push cruise further online

Bit of a delay, but here's our latest column for Travel Weekly, coinciding nicely with the last week of its dedicated Cruise Month:

Two years ago, Travolution asked whether cruise will ever follow other sectors in the travel industry and see a fundamental switch to online sales of its products.

There was plenty of talk among senior cruise executives about how the web was being used primarily as a content distribution platform ­ a place where potential customers could find out more about a ship or route.

Royal Caribbean International's Jo Rzymowska, who was sales and marketing director at the time, evangelised about its new i-brochure system; Ocean Village and Princess Cruises spoke of their live ship webcams.

The interesting point is nobody was able to estimate how much online bookings would grow.

Patrick Ryan of Island Cruises suggested first and second-time cruisers would probably want that human touch when making a booking, but the Œrepeat passenger business¹ would see more people booking via the web.

That time is approaching fast for many of the major cruiselines as customers become familiar with the complicated booking processes and ­ as shown elsewhere ­ naturally turn to the web for convenience.

This will become more likely if the cruiselines recognise this trend and push cheaper fares down the online channel, as so many of their counterparts did years ago.

A surge in intuitive web-based technology is around the corner, which will allow so much more scope for search and booking of complicated products ­ like cruise.

This will not be great news for the third parties currently enjoying the benefits of a buoyant sector happy to pay commission to agencies.

This is why good customer service at the beginning of the purchase funnel ­ reflecting the high-end facilities and care on-ship ­ is more important than ever to establish loyalty.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: cruise

Blog-tastic!

The world has gone blog mad.

Last week we heard how a blog has been created around fans of Carnival Cruises.

A story in the Houston Chronicle tells us the bloggers all met up recently on board Carnival Freedom after making friends through the cruiseline's blog.

And, now there's a gastro-blog.

No, it's not some horrible virus striking people down. It's a foodie commentary blog called Marriott in the kitchen from chef Brad Nelson of the Marriott Hotel, Washington D.C.

To give him his proper title Nelson is 'culinary VP and corporate chef', and as such gets to travel around the world, creating, testing and best of all, tasting dishes.

Nice job if you can get it. Travel the world, eat great food and write about it! Actually the strapline for the blog is food, travel, thoughts...

Nelson can be no stranger to the blogging phenomenon as Marriott's Bill Marriott established a bit of a first when he set up his corporate blog a few years ago.

We can't wait to hear more of Nelson's blog, his culinary creations and likes and dislikes but he'd better watch out. Even we can have too much of a good thing!

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Carnival Cruise Blog is still a very rude one

Cruise giant Carnival must be getting increasingly frustrated with the continued presence of rather naughty posts on the unofficial Carnival Cruise Blog.

Two weeks ago we alerted Carnival respresentatives in the UK to the pornographic links being posted on the homepage of the blog.

They told us the blog actually belonged to a travel agent in California and he would be notified immediately. Unfortunately it was another two days almost before the posts were removed.

Since then the porn demons have been posting busily on the blog, courtesy of the ridiculous open access policy the owner continues to employ.

Carnival has significant brand management issues to iron out. Unfortunately, in the meantime it's open season for the dirty link-baiters.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: carnival cruise carnival open access
porn

When open access and lack of brand control goes wrong

Here is a lesson to bloggers and travel industry brand managers the world over.

The Carnival Cruise Blog has fallen prey to a rather unfortunate piece of, er, link-baiting today.

The blog's home page, which is generated by posts from users about their experience of cruise holidays with Carnival, was populated by links to some rather unsavoury hardcore pornography sites.


[Nathan on the Travel Weekly Blog noticed some odd activity on an RSS feed a few days ago]

The initial response from Carnival Cruise in the UK when we called them this morning went something like this:

"OH MY GOD!"

However, the plot thickened when Lynn Narraway, Carnival's UK director of sales and marketing, called back to say the blog is actually nothing to do with Carnival Cruise but is run by an independent travel agent in California who just happens to sell their products.

Understandably, Carnival is hopping mad about this and is desperately trying to contact the blogger in order to get the material taken down. [The posts were finally removed during the evening of 13 Sept - two days after they first appeared]

The lessons to be learned here are very obvious:

• If, as a blog editor, you allow anybody to write posts there REALLY SHOULD BE checks or filters in place to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen - at all.
• If you are global and high-profile brand (like Carnival) and are aware of a blog which looks like it belongs to the company in terms of its branding, you need to persuade the blog owner to at least highlight its independence.

In fact, the header for the blog currently reads: "Carnival Cruises. Community for Carnival Cruise Line and Cruise Ships."


Confusing for the consumer? You bet.

Carnival does associate itself (via its corporate investor pages) with a modestly successful blog, written by senior cruise director John Heald.

We imagine there is a lot of what PRs call "firefighting" going on in Miami (Carnival global HQ) at the moment.

Unfortunately Carnival's strapline, "The Fun Ships", is resonating with readers of the Carnival Cruise Blog slightly more than marketers were anticipating.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: carnival cruise carnival open access