www.cruise-community.com says that it is “Crystal” clear that Australia is a booming cruise market with the international market, i.e. that outside the US representing 15% of Crystal Cruises’ sales and Australia currently accounting for 20% of that business, Karen Mann, the company’s Los Angeles-based director of international sales, said in Sydney yesterday.
Mann, who arrived yesterday on a whirlwind trip that will also include consumer and trade functions in Melbourne on Wednesday and Thursday before she heads for Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bangkok, was speaking at a media lunch in the boardroom of Wiltrans Australia.
She briefed the newspaper and industry journalists about Crystal Symphony’s $23m upgrade, Crystal Serenity’s 2008 world voyage and the company’s plans for a new ship.
She said Wiltrans, the exclusive gsa for Crystal in Australia, is doing ‘a wonderful job’ and that sales Down Under are on the rise.
It was fitting that two superb domestic wines – a semillion from New South Wales and a shiraz from the Barossa Valley – were served with lunch as Mann indicated that Australian wine and A-list chefs will be a feature of Crystal Cruises’ 12th annual wine and food festival next year.
Report by The Mole from www.cruise-community.com
