| Agents key for Royal Caribbean brands

ROYAL Caribbean Cruise Lines ceo Adam Goldstein has paid tribute to the Australian travel trade, who like their counterparts in other countries “continue to distribute easily a majority of our business”.

Speaking to CW in Sydney this week Goldstein said agents are “effectively our sales force.

“We are very grateful that in key markets – particularly the USA – leisure oriented travel agents have largely rebuilt their business models around cruising and complex vacation packages.

“They’ve seen over the past 20 years that’s where their business model can suceed the best”.

Goldstein said RCL’s relationships with the travel trade had never been better.

While it was important that the cruise brands continued to allow passengers to engage in a variety of ways including through direct bookings and via agents, “we couldn’t be dependent on either one of those channels in its entirety,” he added.