While 2020 is not exactly the big year that the cruise industry had in mind, 2021 is looking much brighter, according to a survey of TravelAge West’s (TAW) travel advisor readers.
Nearly half (45%) of the study’s 1,397 travel advisor respondents are not currently making any cruise reservations. On the other hand, 23% of respondents are making bookings for the first half of next year, while 15% are making bookings for the second half of 2021. Fourteen percent are lining up clients to sail as soon as operations resume.
Most advisors’ clients (62.17%) remain willing to return to cruising, but are waiting for cruise lines to ensure onboard and onshore health and safety, while 19.62% are standing by for an approved and widely available vaccine. Thankfully, only 1.81% of clients claim they will likely never cruise again.
Other factors influencing customers’ decisions to cruise in the future include flexible cancellation policies (24.92%) and price (6.45%). Fortunately, most cruise lines have drastically altered their approach to cancellations such that clients can cancel up to 24 hours in advance without penalty in some instances.
Furthermore, despite false perceptions that cruise ships are a “floating petri dish” made up of thousands of fellow passengers, ship size is not impacting 57.77% of clients’ cruise plans, though some (25.75%) are trending away from the largest vessels with more interest in small cruise ships with a capacity of 799 passengers or fewer. Nearly 9% of clients are more interested in expedition cruising on very small ships of 200 passengers or fewer. Nearly 8% of clients are now more interested in larger and mega cruise ships of 800 passengers or more.
More than half of respondents (59%) say that their clients are not looking for a short-term alternative to cruising, but for those that are, land tours (57.96%) are in the lead, followed by others such as driving trips, all-inclusives, resorts, beaches, domestic travel, FIT vacations and house rentals (26.72%).
Advisors who specialize in cruising are split regarding whether or not to expand their offerings to focus on travel outside of cruising: 26.49% say they aren’t, while 26.08% say they are. (Note: 47.43% of the survey’s respondents do not specialize in cruise.)
Travel advisors are also very clear on what they need from cruise partners to better assist their current efforts. Email communication comes in at No. 1 (55%), followed by webinars (33%) and agent portals (31%).
