Customers booking cruises with Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) consultants across all leisure brands can expect to tap into greater expertise following an agreement between FCTG and Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
The agreement provides the entire FCTG consultant and independent network in Australia and New Zealand with access to CLIA’s globally recognised cruise industry training. Within each brand, cruise specialists will have the opportunity to participate in this exclusive partnership.
This partnership will provide cruise specialists across FCTG leisure brands with the following:
1. Personal development and training operated by CLIA.
2. CLIA resources and toolkit access.
3. Access to CLIA reports and insights.
4. A CLIA profile on their system to allow clients to be directed to cruise specialists.
5. Industry recognition as a cruise specialist.
CLIA Managing Director in Australasia Joel Katz said the FCTG agreement would add more than 3000 travel consultants to CLIA’s global cruise community.
“CLIA aims to make its members the most knowledgeable and successful cruise specialists in Australasia, so we are delighted to help build this expertise across the Flight Centre network,” Mr Katz said. “Being a part of the CLIA community gives travel consultants access to an enormous amount of knowledge, online training, resources and live events, all of which gives them greater ability to assist their clients and boost their cruise business.”
CLIA is recognised as a world leader in cruise industry training for travel consultants, so we’re very excited to have this opportunity for our travel experts to be trained by the best,” said Flight Centre Travel Group Leisure CEO James Kavanagh.
“Cruise is one of the fastest growing areas of the travel industry. As more people choose to cruise, it’s timely for us to upskill our consultants to become cruise specialists so they can offer customers the best ‘shop to ship’ service — from helping them plan their trip to securing the best deal on a cruise that suits.”
“This agreement enables FCTG leisure brands to aim for a significantly larger market share and aligns with our strategic goal of becoming a major player in the Australasian cruise sector,” said Mr Kavanagh.
Recent research by CLIA indicates that the volume of people travelling on cruises globally will exceed the pre-covid high in 2019 by 6% in 2023 and another 14% in 2024.*
*Source: CLIA Passenger Data, 2019 – 2021 and CLIA Cruise Forecast /Tourism Economics (December 2022)
