Carnival marks 5 years

CARNIVAL Cruise Line is this year celebrating five years of sailing out of Australia, with the line’s vp and gm Australia Jennifer Vandekreeke promising “all sorts of little things over the course of the year”.

“We’re kind of having a birthday year,” the executive told Cruise Weekly.

“I’m just so overwhelmed and grateful for the support that we’ve seen from our guests and our travel agent partners,” she said.

Vandekreeke was the first person Carnival sent down under to look at the market and she said her initial feeling was “CCL and Australia are the perfect fit, I can’t believe we weren’t here before”.

Before Spirit first arrived in 2012, the line made a number of changes to the ship, including adding the Green Thunder waterslide and the Serenity Adults Only Retreat.

It then took around six months to bring its pax satisfaction scores up to the same level as the US.

One of the key challenges the line encountered was that “Australians won’t whine” and would only later reveal if they weren’t completely satisfied with something if they were asked, she said.

CCL also soon discovered “Australians won’t lay out in the sun” and responded by removing a number of lounge chairs off the top deck.

“The flip side to that is you need twice as many activities because if they’re not laying out in the sun then the Aussies will participate,” she said.

Trade partners are pictured celebrating Carnival’s milestone on Spirit earlier this month.