Cruise lines woo newcomers

MIAMI — Cynthia Rodriguez has seen cruise ships around Florida, watched commercials touting the option as a value, and heard stories from friends who have cruised.

But the 44-year-old North Bay Village, Fla., resident has never set sail herself, unsure about what she’d do on a ship or how much the trip would actually cost. Lately, concerns about a spate of headline-grabbing incidents on cruise ships have added to her uncertainty.

“I’ve always considered it,” said Rodriguez, who works in bookkeeping. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I’d be stuck on there and kind of be bored.”

With multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, brand partnerships, travel agent help and onboard innovation, cruise lines are desperately trying to woo newcomers such as Rodriguez and the more than 200 million other Americans who have never taken a cruise.

“Getting that first-timer is critically important to us,” said Dwain Wall, senior vice president overseeing agency and trade relations for the Cruise Lines International Association. “We know that the future is bright for us if we can get them on their first cruise — they will come back multiple, multiple times.”

According to CLIA, the greatest potential markets for first-time cruisers include the 95 million millennials, a group between the ages of 18 to 37 that accounts for $1.3 trillion in consumer spending; multigenerational families traveling together; social groups taking cruises around a shared interest; and river and specialty cruising.

There’s a huge pool to draw from. According to a report by CLIA in 2011, the most recent numbers available, only about 73 million people in America — by far the largest cruise market — had ever gone on a cruise, or 24 percent of the population. That was an increase from 2008, when 59 million (or 20 percent) had cruised.

The number of vacationers who choose a cruise continues to increase both in the U.S. and globally, where the passenger count is expected to increase from 21.3 million in 2013 to 21.7 million this year. But the percent of vacationers who have taken a cruise has remained relatively stable.

Executives and industry observers say that converting travelers who have always stuck to land can be tricky for many reasons, including unfamiliarity, decades-old stereotypes and, in the last couple of years, negative publicity surrounding cruise-related incidents.

“If you haven’t been on a ship, it’s very hard to imagine what it’s like,” said Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor-in-chief of CruiseCritic.com. “With a hotel or resort, you know what that is — everybody’s stayed in one. And you can go and stay in a resort, but you can leave if you want to.”

Cruise lines, travel agents and experts say that some of the main points of resistance are people’s concerns that they (or their kids) will be bored; that they’ll be forced to stick to a strict eating and entertainment schedule; that they won’t get enough time to spend at destinations; and that only retirees go on cruises. But while cruise lines have invested billions of dollars in new ships brimming with activities, restaurants and entertainment aimed at young vacationers, that message is still not universally understood.

“From the standpoint of the consumer, the concern is that there’s too much risk of disappointment,” said Henry Harteveldt, travel industry analyst for consultancy Hudson Crossing.

For a noncruising public that was already on the fence, the past two years delivered several reasons to stay on shore. In January 2012, the deadly Costa Concordia shipwreck in Italy drew widespread coverage around the world. The following year, fires aboard the Carnival Triumph and Royal Caribbean International’s Grandeur of the Seas drew new rounds of coverage. Earlier this year, norovirus sickened about 700 people on a Royal Caribbean ship, forcing the company to end a trip early.

“The only thing missing is a real-life ‘Poseidon Adventure,’ ” Harteveldt said. “It’s been a disaster for the industry.”

He said the mishaps and the attention they drummed up have discouraged travelers from taking that first cruise.

“The concern that people have is: ‘If I’m going to spend a lot of money on a cruise and take a week or two of my valuable, hard-earned vacation, why would I want to do something that has even the slightest element of risk involved?’ ” he said.

Bad news for cruise lines

In its segment on the cruise industry, PhoCus Wright’s U.S. Online Travel Overview Thirteenth Edition said that one major cruise line “reports that half of noncruisers reported a more negative view of the segment in 2013, compared to a quarter of active cruisers.”

“The uninitiated take the bad news especially hard, making it difficult for suppliers to grow their market,” said the travel industry research firm’s report. It added that the “industry faces a slow haul on the road back to normal,” with just 3 percent growth expected this year.

Another study, the MMGY Global/Harrison Group 2013 Portrait of American Travelers, said that the number of leisure travelers who were interested in taking a cruise sometime in the next two years dropped from 52 percent in 2012 to 46 percent in 2013. The number of travelers not interested in a cruise went up, from 31 percent to 36 percent.

“This is presumably as a result of the negative publicity that has appeared about industry accidents and other unwelcomed disruptions to cruise itineraries during the past 18 months,” said the report, based on online interviews with 2,511 adults who took at least one overnight leisure trip of 75 miles or more from home during the previous year.

The industry has addressed safety concerns and, in the case of Carnival, devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to fleetwide fixes on safety, reliability and fire-suppression systems. But cruise lines and travel agents are also taking new approaches to lure the uninitiated.

Carnival Cruise Lines introduced the “Great Vacation Guarantee,” meant to encourage newcomers especially to give cruising a try. The guarantee offers a 110 percent refund and free transportation home if guests want to leave within the first 24 hours of a cruise.

Jim Berra, Carnival’s chief marketing officer, said the goal was to eliminate a potential concern, especially for first-time cruisers. Since the guarantee was introduced in September, about 40 people — out of about 2 million guests — have taken the line up on it, mostly because passengers needed to get home for a medical issue or emergency or forgot documents that they needed for the trip.

“It allows us to cover a lot of potential barriers,” he said.

CLIA, the trade association, will launch a training program called “Turn Their Heads — Grow your Business through First-Time Cruisers” in June to educate travel agents on bringing new clients into the fold. Wall said the seminar revolves around “teaching agents how to make the client feel that magic moment when they convince them to make that decision to cruise” and focuses on making sure newcomers understand what modern cruise ships look like and offer.

Cruise lines are working to get that message out themselves, in large part through major advertising campaigns meant to grab the attention of newcomers. Princess Cruises, part of Doral, Fla.-based Carnival Corp., recently launched a $20 million ad campaign across television, radio, print and digital after more than a decade without advertising on TV.

Royal Caribbean International, headquartered in Miami, also took advantage of the Olympics, with television commercials in major markets and a digital push featuring former summer Olympic athletes Gabby Douglas, Ian Thorpe and Tom Daley competing in onboard activities.

And Norwegian Cruise Line capitalized on a Super Bowl charter agreement with Bud Light that turned new ship Norwegian Getaway into the Bud Light Hotel. The days of events resulted in 1 billion digital, print and broadcast impressions, said Norwegian President and CEO Kevin Sheehan, key to attracting attention from potentially new customers.

“That’s how you resonate and get people,” he said. “As a smaller player in a big industry, we have to do those kinds of things to get people to notice us.”

Cruise lines have been counting on advertising to draw attention to what they’ve already been doing for years to bring new people into the fold: redefining the cruise experience beyond shuffleboard and midnight buffets.

Norwegian pioneered the concept of “freestyle cruising,” which abandoned the scheduled, stuffy dining-room model and allowed passengers to choose from an array of restaurants at their leisure. Now, most cruise lines — especially large lines that cater to North Americans — feature a slew of dining options both free and for an extra

The industry’s largest lines, including Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian, all have designs on bringing more families in to grow first-time business — and relatively similar approaches. All three say that their new-to-cruise population makes up about a third of passengers a year (slightly more, in Carnival’s case).

All have invested in activities that will appeal to both kids and active adults and have pursued partnerships with well-known brands that will serve as a familiar bridge to land-based comforts.

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