Growing with groups

Cultivate customer connections to build and grow cruise groups

Advisors having trouble launching group business should look inward to the activities that light them up, said Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean International’s senior vice president of sales, trade support and service. 

That could be their kid’s soccer program, community groups or pickleball. Maybe it’s family, friends and neighbors. Any of those connections can form the foundation for a cruise group, she said. 

Celebrations are another opportunity, Freed said, with Royal Caribbean seeing growth in cruisers celebrating birthdays, graduations, weddings and bar mitzvahs onboard — all good hooks for an advisor to assemble a group. 

One way to start building groups, Freed said, is for advisors after each booking — for a group or otherwise — to ask clients whether anyone they know would like to go on this trip with them. 

“If you are religious about asking that question, you will get one new sale for every four times you ask,” she said.

Freed also offered advice on how to manage groups given the nature of cruise ships. 

When building groups, advisors should consider the onboard amenities available, she said. For instance, she would limit a pickleball-focused group on a cruise to 36 people in order to ensure that everyone has enough time to play. A group of 100 would overwhelm the courts, to which other cruisers also have access. 

Another consideration is how big a group the advisor, and the ship, can manage. For instance, Freed is taking a group of her neighbors on a cruise with Royal’s sister brand Silversea. Booked through a travel advisor, Freed capped the group at 41 people. 

“I couldn’t handle more,” she said. “Even though I could have easily sold 100. They want to dine together every night. On a small luxury ship, it’s doable up to a certain point.”

Freed said the advantage of booking groups is obvious: a new set of clients, some that the advisor wouldn’t have otherwise met if not for the idea or community the group was built around.

And if someone associated with that group can’t make it, the trip may trigger FOMO and motivate them to book the next group or a similar trip with that travel advisor.

Once they have gotten comfortable forming groups, Freed suggests that advisors try to upsize to more complex business. If the advisor knows people who run big or midsize companies, she suggests approaching them about organizing groups for corporate meetings, incentives or ongoing education.

Once a trip is over, an advisor’s goal should shift to maintaining that new and larger stable of clients.

Key to that, she said, is to be proactive to make sure their customers don’t cheat on them. Royal Caribbean found that three and a half out of every five clients cheat on their travel advisors. When asked why, the cheaters said that they didn’t feel connected to their agent. 

“It wasn’t really bad service. It’s just indifference,” Freed said. “They just didn’t feel a connection. I think it’s important that travel advisors connect with their clients.”

To do that, clients need to communicate regularly with clients, she said, especially since some may only book one vacation a year. Keeping up with clients via email and social media is important, she said, but alone are not enough to maintain a strong bond. 

One of Freed’s strategies is to send handwritten cards. And she is an avid letter writer; she keeps a variety of cards on hand, including ones for birthdays, weddings, thank-you’s and holidays. Sometimes she’ll even have cards custom-made with pictures of people she has spent time with.

Cards keep advisors top of mind when clients are ready to plan their next cruise, Freed said, and agents already have the data they need to send birthday and anniversary notes. Knowing their kids’ names and ages is helpful for when they graduate high school or college. 

“You don’t want to lose people that you booked a vacation for to somebody else,” she said. “Once you have them, you want to keep them.”

—Andrea Zelinski

How one advisor maintained momentum from her first river group

A little over a year ago, Kristie Keller, owner of Addicted to Adventures in Bradenton, Fla., wouldn’t have imagined she’d host multiple river cruise groups of close to 50 passengers in 2024. 

Putting groups together is hard, Keller believed then. How would she find the clients? Where would she find the inventory? With just a year of experience and a small client roster under her belt at that point, building a groups business seemed a Herculean task. Now, Keller’s group business is not only thriving, but she’s sharing what she’s learned with other advisors new to the groups game. 

Keller sailed with her first group in May, 45 people on the Rhine River, and has three more booked with Amadeus River Cruises. She credits much of her groups success to working with Amadeus, specifically Marcus Leskovar, executive vice president of the line, whom Keller met at the 2023 ASTA River Cruise Expo.

Leskovar helped provide a launchpad for Keller to build her first group by holding 12 cabins for her to sell. Once she made her first few bookings, things took off. 

“I didn’t have that many clients, but people started inviting their friends to join my group, and those friends were inviting their friends, and it just kept snowballing,” Keller said.

What has worked well for her is building community, be it with the river cruise suppliers or within her groups. 

Keller often uses Facebook to create group pages where she can share pictures and videos of river cruise ships and the sailing experience in hopes of drumming up wanderlust that compels a booking.

“It is important to create FOMO; everyone wants to be a part of a fun group,” she said. “They all want to feel special.” 

And a personal touch can go a long way, Keller said. “My group received extra attention and care from the Amadeus crew. I had the housekeeping team put my brochures for my future group sailings in their cabins with a little letter saying how much I have enjoyed getting to know all of them, and I would love to sail with them in the future,” Keller said, adding that 12 people booked into future groups just from that sailing. 

Often, she said, all it takes is finding one client who can get the booking ball rolling — a pied piper: “You only need one person who has a special interest group, such as wine club, yoga, painting, and that person will invite their group, and those people will invite their friends.”

Advisors should also travel with their group, Keller said, as it helps build friendships and trust among the people they’re hosting. 

Her final pro tip? “Hang a brochure in your hair salon! Hair stylists just chat all day to their clients, and if you hang a brochure up, it will generate conversation about the cruise.” 

—Nicole Edenedo

Private jet suppliers can help advisors reach new heights in group sales 

For travel advisors with an upscale clientele, group travel via private jet can be a sales pinnacle. 

With up to six-figure price tags per person, these trips are certainly niche but also quite lucrative. They are also very complex: Advisors are generally used to handling trips with various countries and on-the-ground orchestration at every stop, but private aviation means the additional logistics of airports, a flight crew and weather issues. 

But suppliers that offer private jets say that they are set up not only help advisors sell their products but also manage the process “from the first conversation until guests return,” said Vinita Bhatia, director of business development at TCS World Travel.

“On custom journeys, we ask a lot of questions up front in order to learn the preferences of the clients as well as the purpose of their travel,” Bhatia said. “These details help us plan not just the itinerary but also some special ‘surprise and delight’ moments during the trip.” 

While private jet travel is complicated, scale matters. Smaller groups tend to have fewer moving parts than larger groups, which need more staff and may include onboard concierges, baggage managers, chefs and doctors. They may even have an advance team that flies out ahead of the jet on commercial routes to make sure that the hotels are ready and that the welcome mat is out when guests arrive. 

Any advisor with a TCS group has a guest services manager who is their point of contact to help curate the itinerary and handle all administrative details and other pretrip coordination. That person is also available 24/7 during the trip, in addition to local support in destinations, should anything arise. 

Even the most well-heeled client could balk at the additional cost of flying a group private. Bhatia said a good selling point is how much hassle is avoided when not flying commercial. 

“Private jet travel allows people to bypass many of the typical pain points associated with traveling,” Bhatia said. “Avoiding layovers, having expedited airport procedures, creating your own itinerary on your own schedule. These things enable travelers to reduce the frustrations and friction they often find en route and instead relax and enjoy the experience in a more convenient and luxurious way.” 

And given the emphasis people put on sharing experiences with friends and family, private jets offer the additional value of time saved.

“We also see that time is incredibly important to everyone; therefore, people see value in paying for luxury, efficiency and access,” Bhatia said. “When spending their disposable income on travel, they want to focus on enjoyment, not logistics.”

Like land tours, operators that offer private jet trips can curate the experience around a group’s special interests or hobbies but with a wider swath of the world to curate from. 

“We once created a private trip for a group of friends based on visiting different distilleries and wineries across the globe,” Bhatia said.

—Johanna Jainchill