Royal named agents’ favourite line

ROYAL Caribbean International has been named by Australian travel agents as their favourite cruise line, narrowly beating Princess Cruises in this year’s Cruise Weekly industry survey.

Royal was ranked top by 16.2% of agents who regularly sell the line, coming in above Princess at 15.8% and other top lines including Celebrity Cruises (8.1%), Scenic (7.7%), Viking Ocean Cruises (6.6%), APT (5.8%) and Holland America Line (5.4%).

The favourite cruise line category was one of several new questions in this year’s cruise survey, which gathered the insight of Australian travel agents to provide a snapshot of how the major lines are viewed.

Other new questions looked at areas including which lines help best with local area marketing (topped by APT, Scenic and Princess) and which lines offer truly unique experiences (UnCruise Adventures, Paul Gauguin Cruises and Disney Cruise Line).

Agents also nominated which lines have excellent management teams (APT, Scenic and Princess) and which ones offer an efficient online booking portal (Princess Cruises, P&O Australia and Carnival Cruise Line).

Conducted by StollzNow Research, this year’s survey combined the ocean cruise sector with the specialist areas of expedition and small ship cruises, in addition to river cruising.

Agents named Princess Cruises as the line they most regularly sold, followed by P&O Australia, Royal Caribbean Int’l, Celebrity Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line.

Keep an eye on Cruise Weekly, Travel Daily and travel Bulletin for more details, or to request the entire cruise survey, email research@traveldaily.com.au.