Home-based agency group Travelmanagers has raised the stakes in terms of cruise competitiveness, launching a new brand to specialise in the cruise market. UNVEILED at last weekend’s TravelManagers annual conference in Fiji, the new brand is to be named CruiseManagers, with the new identity to be part of the Cruiseco...
Home-based agency group
Travelmanagers has raised
the stakes in terms of cruise
competitiveness, launching a
new brand to specialise in the
cruise market.
UNVEILED at last weekend’s TravelManagers
annual conference in Fiji, the new brand is to
be named CruiseManagers, with the new
identity to be part of the Cruiseco consortium.
While the finishing touches are still being put
in place, the brand is tentatively set to launch
in the first quarter of 2013, according to Joe
Araullo, ceo of TravelManagers parent
company House of Travel.
“It’s all about specialising in cruise, and my
conversation with Cruiseco was we were going
to set up a separate brand called
CruiseManagers,” Araullo told Cruise Weekly.
In criteria set by House of Travel, the new
brand will not be made available to all of the
current 375 personal travel managers in the
network; rather, only to those who have
written a pre-set level of cruise sales over a
predetermined period of time, Araullo added.
PTM’s who are accredited as International
Cruise Council Australasia masters will also be
automatically permitted to use the new brand.
PTM’s who meet the preset sales criteria to
join the new brand will be encouraged within
the network to build on their cruising education
and attain an ICCA masters accreditation.
“What this will do is give all of the PTM’s the
opportunity to specialise in cruise,” he added.
“The reason [for starting the brand] was due
to requests I was receiving from the network
for a cruise club and the reality is that what the
network wanted was some cruise marketing
and access to cruise wholesale, and my theory
was ‘why duplicate that’ when Cruiseco do it
well and focus on it,” Araullo concluded.
