| Hot booking market for agents

SILVERSEA Cruises is urging travel advisors to get proactive and start selling its product, with passengers far more profitable now than they were pre-pandemic.

The cruise line’s Director of Sales Australia & New Zealand Steve Richards told Cruise Weekly its cruisers are now making longer and more expensive bookings than previously – a fact fully evident with the 2023 World Cruise selling out in under 24 hours (CW 24 Mar).

“People are now booking longer voyages or combination voyages, where they’re combining two or three seven-night cruises together in the Med,” Richards revealed.

“They’re also upgrading their suite from a Veranda to a Suite, and Business class air.”

Richards said Silversea’s demographic, which is the 55 /baby boomer market, hasn’t quite been as badly affected financially by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They’re going to be the first vaccinated, the first ready to cruise,” he said.

“They have now got almost two years’ worth of travel budgets which are almost doubled.”

Also selling well is Silver Moon, Silversea’s latest vessel and new flagship, which will begin sailing in the Mediterranean next month (CW 12 Apr) at about 75% occupancy, most of which is already exhausted.

Moon will also serve as a testing ground for Silversea’s new SALT concept, where food offerings will change based on the location of the ship on each itinerary, in an effort to “bring that shore experience on-board for the guests.”

To help advisors take advantage of the lucrative booking market, Silversea has revamped its Academy (CW 30 Sep 2020), to equip agents to sell the new ships and on-board concepts the cruise line has introduced during the pandemic.

“We’ve grown the fleet over this time, and we’ve grown the product on delivery as well, so there is so much to learn,” Richards said.

“An average booking is $20,000 with us, so agents stand to make $2,500 commission with us.

“There’s so much value that agents are actually getting about 7% more commission than they were getting last year because of this all-inclusive product…clients used to book that separately and agents wouldn’t get the commission on that.”

Richards added Silversea would take a “phased approach” to resuming its ships around the world as it is able to do so.