Travel agents book 96% at Radisson

Travel agent bookings at Radisson Seven Seas Cruises continue to dominate. Andrew Poulton, the cruise line’s director of strategic marketing, told TravelMole: “We take direct business if someone insists, but we don’t even have a booking engine at our web site. We recommend people work with travel agents.” In fact, he said, agents supply about 96% of the cruise line’s business. “It used to be 97%, so it’s down slightly,” said Mr Poulton. The average Radisson cruise is about $9,000 per couple, he said. The average age of passengers has gone down in the past few years from 62 to 55. Most cruises are seven days because “we tend to attract a lot of baby boomers who have their own businesses and still work as executives,” according to Mr Poulton. The cruise line seldom offers discounted prices, but it does have some areas that offer free airline tickets. Some of its most popular cruises are in the Baltic states. “We’ve been going there for years. People are fascinated with the area,” said Mr Poulton. The Soviet Union is also highly popular. One of Radisson’s seven-day cruises spends three days in the historic city of St. Petersburg. “It’s unusual in that we spend three days docked there, but when we only had an overnight, people would say they didn’t have time to see everything,” said Mr Poulton. The Baltic sailings have a very short season, lasting only about seven weeks from early July to late August. –Report by David Wilkening–