Industry Q&A: Adolfo Perez of Carnival Cruise Line

Beyond praising travel agents for their support, the new Why Use A Travel Advisor (WUATA) program from Carnival Cruise Line is poised to prove the invaluable worth of these experts to consumers, as well.

Central to the campaign will be social media promotions, contests, exclusive merchandise, giveaways, text alerts and WUATA Word, a crowdsourced word cloud that will grow as the initiative expands. Four events will take place throughout the summer: in Orlando, Fla.; Minneapolis; New York; and Los Angeles. The promotion’s grand finale will happen in November at Northstar Travel Group’s CruiseWorld conference. (Note: Northstar Travel Group is the parent company of TravelAge West.)

Advisors can win big during these events, including gifts from co-sponsors Cruise Lines International Association and the American Society of Travel Advisors, as well as the chance to win a trip to CruiseWorld with airfare included.

We asked Adolfo Perez, senior vice president of sales and trade marketing for Carnival, to share more about the new program.

How was WUATA devised?
For the last few years, we’ve done the Agentpalooza bus tour, and the events were a way to thank agents for their support. As we were thinking about 2019, I asked, “Is there something we can do differently this year that still celebrates agents but adds more value?” So, we came up with WUATA: Why Use A Travel Advisor.

I think one of the ways we can add value is by talking to consumers and explaining why using an advisor is a great thing for them.

We’re asking each advisor to invite one client and one “not yet a client” — maybe a friend of the client who hasn’t quite booked — to these two-hour events. Once there, we’re going to try to capture content such as client testimonials about why they use an agent and the benefits of doing so. We’re also going to create assets that we’ll be able to share on social media that agents can then post on their own social media accounts.

Additionally, we’re going to have one of our Diamond guests (who has booked through an agent) at the event to speak about the advisor-client relationship and why they think it’s a great idea to use a travel agent.

Let’s start the WUATA crowdsourced word cloud with a word from you.
Mine would be “expert.” There are many more words I can think of, too: “Knowledge,” “savings,” “efficient” and “valuable” are a few more, but there are a million different words to describe advisors.

How did you choose the location for each event?
We’ll be at Port Canaveral in Orlando to celebrate the new Mardi Gras ship. We have a new terminal we’re building there that’s going to be fantastic to share. New York will include Carnival Radiance, and Mardi Gras will be there, as well.

Then, in Los Angeles, we will have a lot of news about Carnival Panorama and what we are doing in San Diego and San Francisco. We decided to go to Minneapolis, too, because we have heat maps of where our travel agent partners are, and there’s a big contingency of home-based, independent agents there.

The Details
Carnival Cruise Line
www.goccl.com