Australia grows in significance for Azamara
Australia could overtake the UK as the second most significant source market for Azamara Club Cruises this year, with the operator hopeful that it will send a ship to Australia in early 2016.
The subsidiary of Royal Caribbean International, which currently counts just two ships in its fleet, reported good growth in overall sales, with Australia performing particularly well, according to senior vice president marketing & sales, Edie Bornstein.
Currently its third largest market, Australia’s share of overall sales is now “creeping towards 20%”, she revealed.
As a result, the needs of Australians have been taken into account when devising the Azamara program.
Although no specific destination is a stand out performer for Aussies, who are buying across the entire program, itineraries have been designed to run back to back in order to cater to their greater holiday allowances.
“The Australian mindset is to go away for greater lengths of time,” Bornstein told Travel Today. “As a result, we’ve started to design the itineraries to run back to back with no repeat of ports.”
Although no new ships have as yet been confirmed, she was optimistic an announcement might be made by the end of the year. However, Azamara has just undertaken a $20 million refurbishment of both vessels.
Meanwhile, business continues to be “Aus-amazing”, in Bornstein’s own words.
“”We blew out our Q1 and Q2 goals and we’re trending to do the same for Q3 and Q4,” she said.
“The biggest challenge over the next 12 months will be creating more brand awareness around the world with limited budgets.”
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