While onboard Windstar Cruises’ newly stretched and improved Star Breeze, TravelAge West had the opportunity to sit down with Steve Simao, the line’s vice president of sales, to learn about Windstar’s current enhancement program and overall future of the small-ship brand.
From a sales perspective, how can travel agents best convey the Star Plus Initiative?
The Star Plus class is for luxury clients who are looking for an intimate, but also more casual, luxury experience. We're kind of unique in that space in that we get CEOs, we get professional people, like all the other luxury brands — but we're [also] for people who really want to let their hair down and relax on a vacation.
So, travel agents really need to think through their luxury clients and [think] of people who don't need that pretense and don't want something stuffy. They want this sort of fun atmosphere. I think that's the Windstar difference. And the other thing is that it’s a true small ship. Even though we've enlarged the ship, it’s still quite small.
What should travel advisors know about the new cabin categories?
Remember that the smallest stateroom is 277 square feet — it's an all-suite ship — and the new staterooms are sort of a flip design [an alternate configuration compared to the ship’s original standard suites], but it's really that same size that has been very, very popular.
With the hundred-passenger capacity increase, are there any crowding concerns onboard?
We don't think so. We have a lot more open deck space, and we think that a lot of people will gravitate toward that. The new pool is a big focal point. We're already seeing that people are really gathering in that center area. The public areas were never even close to being crowded before. People really spread out, and the ship was very spacious.
The other thing is we've added the expanded spa and the gym. People who maybe couldn't get in the spa before, now [have] more opportunities. Even the Veranda is greatly expanded. We added the extra seating area there. So, it pulls people in different directions.
Star Breeze features 50 new suites following its transformation.
Credit: 2021 Windstar CruisesWhat advice would you give to a travel agent navigating these transitional waters as Windstar ramps up to a full return?
Continue to use this downtime to learn about the brands. I think consumers have done that. They’ve been really doing a lot of research about what they want to do. So, travel advisors need to continue to stay on top of the brands and be the experts and learn about what [Windstar and others] are doing.
We’ve still got great opportunities in 2021 for travel advisors to book themselves on Windstar and get onboard to see it firsthand.
We partner with [TravelAge West parent company] Northstar Travel Group on our Star Specialist program. Take that course and refresh yourself because there are very clear indications that the travel consumer is going to come back to small ships.
We’ve still got great opportunities in 2021 for travel advisors to book themselves on Windstar and get onboard to see it firsthand.
Is there anything else advisors should be aware of at this time?
We wanted to create these turnkey programs that automate things for them, so we partnered with BranchUp and MailPound. Both of those are free [marketing] services for travel agents that we, as suppliers, pay for. That allows [advisors] to keep that Windstar message on their page and get leads from it.
We've done some reorganization of our sales team, and that's something I'm really proud of. What it boils down to is that we know there are travel advisors, particular home-based travel advisors or smaller travel agencies, that may not be making as many Windstar sales. We know there's a lot of opportunity for them to grow their small-ship business with us.
We obviously had some layoffs due to COVID-19, but when we rehired, we didn't go back to the same old plan. We actually hired two business development representatives. Their sole focus is to reach out to the home-based advisors in these large networks or to smaller mom-and-pop travel agencies that may not get as much attention and just handhold them and grow them into great partners of ours. There’s a lot of opportunity for some of these smaller agencies or individual agents to become Windstar experts and really grow their business.
Also, our traditional salespeople are going to more frequently connect with the big accounts. So, we've got this two-pronged approach in the way we've hired. And then we promoted one of our regional sales managers to a new position as director of field sales, and her dedicated job is to just help travel agents with their business.
With the extra hundred beds for each of these ships, that's a huge capacity increase for our brand. We've identified that growth is going to come from travel agents and that's where we're investing.
Now that the Star Plus class is coming out, what is the future of the Wind class sailing ships?
That’s very much still a part of the Windstar brand. I regularly see the operational updates, and no ships have been so well taken care of during this pandemic. They've had rigging done, and they've had new decks put down. There’s been a continued investment in those ships, including some major work done in 2019.
I think from a software standpoint, we’re going to have this sort of complete synergy. They’re going to have the same service and the same type of foods. And all of the investments that we're making are going to be on the Wind class.
Just by the nature of the fact that they have sails, they are going to attract a certain type of client who is looking for that experience. I think that they'll be really important to us as we go forward, and I think that's an area of opportunity for us to look for expansion.
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