Creative Cruising sailed away as winner of the prestigious Most Outstanding Wholesaler at this year’s NTIA. Karryon chats to Creative Cruising General Manager Caroline Hitchen to talk key travel trends and changes, and how they toppled some “incredible” nominees.
Considering this was the first NTIA since 2019, how special does this year’s award feel?
This year’s NTIA was particularly special. It was wonderful to celebrate and reconnect with 1,200 travel industry friends and colleagues, together in one room. Creative Cruising was thrilled to be recognised as the Most Outstanding Wholesaler for 2022!
You had some stiff competition. To what do you attribute your win?
Congratulations to the finalists across all categories. To stand alongside incredible names in the travel industry is truly humbling.
At Creative Cruising, we operate only for the trade and we continually supported our agency partners throughout the pandemic and into the rebound of their businesses.
We launched new initiatives to support their ever-changing business needs, developed new technology solutions and focussed our support on unbeatable service at every step of the way.
How has the pandemic changed the way you operate?
The pandemic has been the largest crisis faced by the cruise industry to date with no precedents, neither in size, nor in consequences.
The pandemic put a lens across every aspect of our business. We remain focussed on our service, support, specialist knowledge and booking platform innovations.
- Creative Cruising retained staff across every department throughout the pandemic. Our brilliant Call Centre and operational teams worked tirelessly to ensure refunds and cancellations were reconciled quickly. We were just a phone call away to support our partners.
- We invest in our team and focus on continuous professional development. We proudly received CLIA Masters Certification for Call Centre and Sales team members during the pandemic. This is CLIA’s highest level of certificate. In fact, in Australia, there are less than 2% of agents with CLIA Masters.
- We launched initiatives to support our agencies coming out of the pandemic including white label technology solutions to land their B2C enquiry, marketing campaigns and to facilitate low touch, volume bookings.
- We continue to develop new partnerships and curate exciting holiday package combinations with wholesale airfares, land, touring, rail, plus cruise to provide a unique product in the market and to give our network of agencies a competitive edge.
- In addition, in 2021, we very successfully launched a brand new membership model, ‘Cruise Spirit’, for high value Cruise Travel Agencies. An exclusive group with unique benefits and rewards shaped by our members.
Where to now for the travel industry?
The future for travel is bright. We are seeing some key trends:
- Clients value travel advisors as ‘experts in their field’ more than ever before. More travel advisors charge upfront for their professional service, in line with other service industries
- Travellers are looking to stack experiences into their holidays and are seeking extra value
- We are seeing trends for longer duration holidays and an impetus to book travel now
- Clients are booking up the ship and seeking longer itineraries. There is increased interest in bucket list destinations and back to back cruises
- We are seeing increased capacities across air, land and sea. There will be 24 new ocean and river ships delivered in 2022-2023 alone. Over the next 10 years, Boeing and Airbus will deliver over 39,000 new passenger and freighter aircraft
What do you love most about the travel industry?
The passion within the travel industry is beyond compare to other industries I have worked in before. We are resilient, we have shared the highs and lows; we are more connected, supportive and stronger than ever before.
