Murano Restaurant
We attended a “ship shopping” event last week where we were able to scope out a few of the latest ships from all three cruising categories, from mass market to luxury. Celebrity Cruises‘ Celebrity Solstice caught our eye with its meetings-friendly brand. Larger than usual venues offer excellent meeting spaces, and their highly-regarded food and entertainment make for over-the-top events and presentations. Ron Gulaskey, director of sales, corporate/charters, spoke to us a little bit about how Celebrity Cruises makes meeting and incentive groups feel like total rock stars while onboard their ships.
Prevue: What are Celebrity Cruise meetings’ top selling points for U.S. planners?
Ron Gulaskey: The biggest one is that we’re a premium adult-service product. It seems like when most people are looking for quotes they see Carnival and Royal Caribbean on the internet or television, so they book them, but they’re mass market contemporary brands. We’re a premium brand so if you’re going on an incentive trip, nine out of 10 times you aren’t allowed to bring your children as part of your group. Do you really want to have a thousand other children onboard that aren’t your own?
We’re also the only premium product that does 4- and 5-night sailings. Everybody else usually does 10 or more nights and we have a lot of 7-night sailings and some shorter ones, as I mentioned. Those travel to both the Eastern and Western Caribbean.
What makes you stand apart from mass-market companies?
We lean more toward the luxury brands and away from the contemporary brands. What makes us premium is our service and dining. We offer top choices in that respect. It’s the display of our product—the different restaurants we have and the variety of product.
It’s really the service, too. When you come onboard you’re greeted with champagne and someone escorts you to your stateroom. It’s a way to give your incentive winners the attention they deserve.
Do many groups book meetings onboard or does your clientele primarily consist of incentive trips?
We do have a lot of meetings and especially recently, we’ve had more than before. With continuing education groups like doctors and lawyers they understand the quality of the brand so when they come on they definitely mix business and pleasure.
Because of our shorter sailings we’re allowed to have a lot of meetings onboard since they tend to be three to five nights. We have a huge influx of meeting planners calling us about our short products, especially since cruises save them so much money as it is anyways, compared to land properties.
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