John Chernesky, senior vice president of sales for Norwegian Cruise
Line has been assessing the company’s relationship with travel agents
and has promised to do better.
Speaking at the recent CruiseWorld, which took place early November
in Florida, he said, "Our ultimate goal is really to become the easiest
brand that you work with. We're not there yet. I would give us a C grade
right now," he said.
Chernesky wasn't specific about what NCL could improve on, but he said there are problems that will take time to address.
"We won't fix every problem overnight," he said. "Just know that
every day we are working to make your life easy because we know you work
with so many suppliers, and we want to be your cruise line of choice."
In a follow-up interview with
Travel Weekly’s Andrea Zelinski, Chernesky said that NCL surveyed more
than 10,000 frontline travel advisors, owners and managers of agencies,
then sent another survey to the line's top 100 partners.
One of the questions the surveys asked was whether NCL was an easy
cruise line to work with, and another was how NCL compared with its
competitors.
"We definitely weren't the worst. We have a good grade," he said. But
agents are going to frequent the lines that are the easiest to do
business with, he said, ranging from the ease in the booking process to
resolving guest issues to having strong IT.
NCL is now reviewing long-time policies and questioning how it can
better streamline. For instance, he said some IT changes are needed,
like a better booking engine and an improved process for the line's air
programme.
It is also looking to improve how fast it can respond to guest
service issues, the ease of booking again, and making it easier to
confirm venue space on a ship for groups.
"There's no supplier out there that says, 'I want to be the hardest
cruise line to work with’,” he said. "I get that. But saying we want to
be the easiest is now our North Star and will govern every decision we
make."