Focusing on the highly successful travel advisor channel, Celebrity Cruises in February will launch a new—and gamified—version of its training program and add a position dedicated to serving the trade.
In an exclusive interview onboard Celebrity Ascent, Katina Athanasiou, Celebrity’s senior vice president of sales & services for The Americas, told TRO that the Celebrity Learning program is currently in drydock—but when it emerges in 2025 it “will offer amazing opportunities to learn much more about our ships and brand.” The site’s “facelift” will add content and functionality, gamification elements, and elevated awards when travel advisors finish the courses.
“We’re going to leverage it more to be a site for resources and webinars, where you can see all the previous trainings we’ve done, as well as learn about our systems and our new initiatives,” Athanasiou said. “I’m very excited – it’s a huge investment, but it will ultimately deliver better content and ability for our agents to engage more often with the brand.”
Over the past months, she noted, Celebrity has been “watching the growth in the home-based and IC communities, and we’re working to be very intentional in building a strategy and then a structure” to work with them. “Nearly two-thirds of advisors are either home-based or ICs, and many are new to the industry. How we partner with those advisors, how we engage, and how we train is a little different from pre-pandemic.”
Also on the agenda is more collaboration among the three Royal Caribbean sister brands—Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Silversea—and “a big media push on national TV,” including new markets like professional and college sports.