Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ historically ‘premium’ cruise brand, Oceania Cruises, has been repositioned as a ‘luxury’ sister-brand of Regent Seven Seas Cruises. The realignment is the vision of Jason Montague, the former President of Regent, who returned to NCLH earlier this year in the new capacity of Chief Luxury Officer for both Regent and Oceania.
Speaking exclusively with LATTE last month at Virtuoso Travel Week, Steve Odell, Senior Vice President International & Consumer Sales for Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, said one of his first actions working alongside Montague was to uncomplicate Oceania’s cruise fares.
In Las Vegas last month at Virtuoso Travel Week, are Steve Odell, SVP International and Consumer Sales, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, with Lisa Pile, VP Sales & GM Asia Pacific, Regent Seven Seas Cruises
“With any brand, it’s great to have fresh, new eyes. That started with Jason coming back.”
Odell said that when Montague returned to NCLH after a two-year break (which saw Andrea DeMarco take over as President of Regent Seven Seas Cruises), he quizzed why Oceania Cruises wasn’t already positioned as luxury.
“The hardware is luxury, the service is luxury, the experience you get is full of luxury touches, so why are we calling ourselves premium when you have other brands with smaller and larger ships calling themselves luxury. So Jason said, let’s take a different approach. We’re going to start addressing what luxury means to the Oceania Cruises’ brand.”
“Sitting with both brands in my hands, even with me, I have to distinguish how they sit, and to define it, and I believe we’ve solved that. We’ve fine-tuned it.”
Odell explained that Oceania Cruises provides guests with the ‘Luxury of Choice’, where some luxury things are included, but not everything. Rooms are smaller and 70% of accommodations on the ships are veranda staterooms.
At the other end of the luxury scale, the Regent Seven Seas Cruises brand is fully inclusive, and all suites, and all balconies, and smaller ships.
“I think we’ve got the two ends of luxury covered. You’ve got the pinnacle of luxury with the Regent brand and you have the entry-level luxury by choice with Oceania.”
“We’ve carried out quite big changes with the [Oceania] brand. We changed the pricing, we simplified it, and business is really romping since,” he said. That involved replacing four previous fare options with one.
“Internationally, the fares and promotions were too complicated. So we made a big change from 1 June, simplifying the fares.”
Commenting on Oceania’s marketing approach, Odell said that in the past “we’ve had a bit of a ‘one-size fits-all’ approach, but international needs to be treated differently because the booking cycles are different to the United States, so we’ve changed things up a bit.”
He adds that a lot of the business Oceania is seeing is “unusually late this year. Asia Pacific is performing particularly well.”
“We can get early business from Australia, we can get late business from Asia. By now we’ve normally stopped selling in-year, but business is still there because the deals are good. The drinks package is normally an extra, but we added it into the promotional price, and that, I think, was a trigger for Oceania – particularly in the Aussie market.”
The now Miami-based luxury cruise expert believes there are still untapped markets for Oceania to explore, including groups. “I think we are missing a trick with Groups a little bit. Oceania is geared toward group travel. We’ve done pretty well in Asia with groups from different markets,” he adds.
“But it’s exciting. We’ve found new avenues and now it’s about sharpening things up from a training and an event perspective, because that’s always been important in Australia.”
Further, Odell confirmed in Las Vegas to LATTE that Oceania Cruises will be undertaking a rebranding, to be launched by the end of the year.
