Advantage plea to members: Don’t sell NCL

Advantage members still selling Norwegian Cruise Line have been urged to stop supporting the company which is no longer one of the consortium’s preferred suppliers.

The organisation’s leisure director Julia Lo Bue-Said reminded delegates attending the annual conference in Malaga that Advantage no longer has a commercial relationship with NCL since it cut its commission without consulting agents.

However, several Advantage members are still selling NCL cruises.

In what sounded like a call to arms, Bue-Said used her opening speech to persuade agents to stick to the consoritum’s sales policy.  She said: "We understand cruise lines have a huge amount of tonnage and they have to fill it, we get that, but what we don’t get is that the only way to do that is to cut commissions to agents who are supporting them."

She added: "If other cruise lines followed NCL and knocked an extra 5% off the gross margin, what would that do to your bottom line? What plan do you have in place if commissions fall? Will you still have a business in two to three years’ time?"

NCL was not the first cruise line to cut commission but Bue-Said is angry that, unlike other lines, it didn’t discuss its move with Advantage. Instead, the cruise line has negotiated rates with members on an individual basis, with payments based on volume of turnover.

"It is not acceptable to have a business partner who provides members with commercial arrangements that you have to have an economics degree to understand," she said. "With all other cruise lines we work with agents know how much commission they get with each sale, but not with NCL and that’s not acceptable."

Bue-Said said it wasn’t legal for Advantage to coerce members into boycotting a tour operator, but she told TravelMole that when customers inquired about NCL cruises, members should switch-sell.

She told delegates that Advantage has a collective buying power of £3 billion and that last year it delivered £3.5m incremental commission to members. "The Advantage team have successfully improved many commercial deals," she added.

However, when Advantage head of commercial John Sullivan asked which members "lived and breathed the Advantage sales policy" only a few hands went up.

"You need to use the sales policy," he said. "Your staff need to know what it is. To be most profitable, follow the sales policy. You need to support the operators. They are supporting you, you need to support them. Look at what’s happened to cruise. That will go further. If you don’t support them, we won’t be able to get you the best in class commercial terms.

"You should sell what’s right for the customer but it has to be right for you and for the partner, it’s not all about the customer."

He said the Advantage would launch a new sales policy including "commended" tour operators based on the level service to agents and looking at criteria such as call costs, payment terms and speed of delivery. It will also have a "Partner of the Month", for which it will be looking for additional benefits such as override commission and exclusive offers.

One of the organisations’ most successful marketing initiatives this year , said Bue-Said, was a direct mail campaign which brought members an additional 902 customers and delivered an additional £7.7 million of revenue.

She said 2013 had started off well for Advantage members with leisure sales (helped by Thomas Cook’s price parity) up 16% and corporate air sales up 3% and hotel booking 10% higher year-on-year.