Cruise Industry Poised to Get Leg Up in 2007

New ships with more capacity and new ports will lead to more people selecting cruises as their vacation of choice in 2007, according to Maurice Zarmati, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Carnival Cruise Lines.

Mr. Zarmati joined fellow cruise industry specialists from Norwegian Cruise Line, Norwegian Coastal Voyage and Holland America Line, Inc., on a panel entitled “Cruising Into Big Sales” held on December 4 at the Venetian Resort Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The panel was part of the three-day event sponsored by GlobalTravel.com, Inc. (GTI), designed to help independent and home-based travel agents learn the latest marketing tactics and travel trends.

There is a minimum of 150 million people who will vacation this year alone. Only 44 million have cruised, leaving the rest ripe for cruise company’s marketing messages. And, based on the Cruise Line industry Association’s second quarter numbers, more of those people are already taking to the seas, with 11.67 percent more people enjoying cruises than the same time last year.

A trend that will continue, according the Terri Burke, Vice President of Business Development for Norwegian Cruise Line, will be consumers’ growing options on how they book their trips as well as when, where and how they want to travel.

Among those options are independent and home-based travel agents who have the same abilities as the corporate agencies without the overhead.