Here’s what four of the experts speaking at Cruise360 in Sydney today had to say about the current state and future of cruising in Australia and around the world.
Ben Angel, Vice President & Managing Director Asia Pacific, Norwegian Cruise Line.
“There’s a lot of conversation around the challenges for growth in this region, but one of the largest opportunities for growth is sourcing guests from this region to travel on cruises overseas.
Those of us from global cruise lines have deployment all over the world. There’s no shortage of amazing product and amazing experiences for your guests to travel overseas.
There’s a huge opportunity here for us as cruise lines. I think we’ve got to expand our thinking outside of just home port and domestic. It remains a great opportunity, but there is a wider opportunity out there, with global deployment from all of our cruise lines.
I don’t want to play down the cost of living pressures, because they’re real and a lot of us in this room will be feeling them.
But when you look at the record years that our cruise lines are announcing, when you look at demand from past cruises and new to cruise, it’s never been better.
I don’t think there’s a better value proposition in holiday than cruise. I truly believe that if you stack a cruise holiday up against a land holiday, I think we come out on top every time.
Peter Little, President, Carnival Australia and P&O Cruises Australia
“Australia is an expensive market to operate in and there are many reasons for that. Fuel being one but of course fuel is a necessity to the cruise industry.
But the issue that we’ve been facing recently is that we’re a network operation so if one part of the network falls over, then it can have consequences on the rest of the network.
Sydney and Brisbane can’t sustain the cruise industry on their own as two standalone ports, as fantastic as they are. We need destinations to go to but if destinations within the network fall over that will impact overall deployment.
There are so many stakeholders involved with the pricing structure that need to come together to have a conversation about the consequences of that and how we’re going to make Australia an internationally competitive market.”
Deb Corbett, Chief Executive Officer Asia Pacific, PONANT
“At the office we talk a lot about the great wealth transfer that’s happening. And it’s particularly interesting for our sector, because we’ve never seen a generation in the history of this country where the living are actually giving to their children and then their children are giving to their children.
What that’s doing is actually making the newcomer to our market much younger. So we’re finding that we’ve got this new luxury client emerging and now there’s an incredible mix between the traditional luxury client and this emerging client.
So we’re finding that we have to switch our strategies to counteract what’s happening in the market and I think that’s something that probably all of us are seeing in our businesses at the moment.”
Gavin Smith, Vice President & Managing Director, Royal Caribbean International
“We’re seeing Australian families protect that right to their holiday but also giving everybody something to look forward to, something to talk about over the back fence. That is a very rich part of our culture.
I think where we’re protecting that and we’re seeing that with booking patterns where customers are booking further and further in advance. We create family memories.”
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