Even as the first Prima-class ship rolled out, with five more in production behind it, NCL Holdings CEO Frank Del Rio asked his staff what they could do to upgrade the existing fleet—and anted up a $1.5-billion budget, NCL CEO Harry Sommer told the crowd at the Dream Vacations/CruiseOne annual conference onboard Encore last week.
The new Prima class, whose first ship just rolled out, shows NCL’s direction moving forward: elevating the product with upgraded menus, new entertainment, and more staff—and 10,000 travel advisors invited aboard so far to spread the message.
Obviously, it’s a winning formula. With the highest guest satisfaction scores and repeat rates in the fleet, Prima already is the best-sold ship for 2023. Its sister, Norwegian Viva, will join in August and be virtually identical; but Prima 3 and 4 “will continue to elevate,” being larger and with more amenities. They probably will sail the Northeast, the Caribbean and Europe, and perhaps Bermuda.
And adding perhaps the most sought-after amenity of all, the new ships will join the rollout of Starlink broadband internet, which has been tested on two ships. It will roll out on “most, if not all, of the fleet in 2023,” Sommer said.
Also ramping up is NCL’s air department. With airfares rising, having a guaranteed fare is an advantage of using the program—and about half of all customers are taking advantage of it. New staff has cut telephone hold times to about 60 seconds as of last week, Sommer said.
NCL’s Todd Hamilton actually did credit Dream Vacations’ parent company World Travel Holdings with pushing through the idea of paying commissions on NCFs, but Sommer attributed it more to the industry as a whole. On a cross-country listening tour as the pandemic eased, “disproportionately, I heard, ‘we’ve made a lot of progress selling resorts in Mexico and the Dominican Republic,’” in part because they had no protocols but also because they pay commission on the entire amount, he said. “So I said great, we’re going to do both.”
Paying commissions on NCFs produced “amazing results. There was an extraordinary difference between the agencies we were paying on NCFs and those we weren’t.” In fact, Sommer said, since launching the program “we’ve had the best three weeks in the history of the company, both overall and with trade sales.” Even better, this month will be the best month in the company’s history, even though the first two weeks of November are traditionally slow as customers wait for Black Friday sales.
Ships in North America and Europe are near 100% occupancy, while “exotic itineraries are still a little slow because they have long booking windows. Come April 1, when we are no longer in those places, we should be 100% full,” he said.
To meet the demand, all ships outside of Hawaii are staffed at higher levels than February 2020; the hardest to fill, Pride of America, has just under 800 staff “thanks to a huge push, and we think we’ll be at the full 900 by early January.” That’s good news, as the ship is fully sold out through June.
NCL loves both the direct and the trade channels, “our goal is to maximize consumer demand,” he said. “But we invest in the trade disproportionately because we believe that having thousands of entrepreneurs will result in our ultimate success. We are about demand generation because that leads to the highest revenue.”
In the past two weeks, trade sales were equal to 2019 volume—“a huge improvement over early in the year,” Sommer said. But that’s not good enough. “Now we have to get that up even higher. We need 8% more bookings with our new inventory, so we need you to come up.”
In the meantime, though, there’s much to be thankful for this Turkey Day.
“We are at a record book position at record prices, and the last three weeks have been record weeks.”
Stay tuned next week for more coverage of the DreamVacations/CruiseOne conference…
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.