Princess Cruises has made several strategic changes to its sales division to strengthen its support for travel agents across Australia and New Zealand.
The changes include the creation of five new state manager leadership positions across Australia for the cruise line, and a new national manager position planned for New Zealand.
Princess Cruises’ new state managers are Rachaelle Tyrrell (NSW and the ACT), Jared Voss (Victoria and Tasmania), Helen Mezzen (Queensland) and Emma Pequin (Western Australia), with roles covering South Australia and the Northern Territory to be announced in the future.
In addition, there will be expanded key and national account management and sales analytics teams within the Princess Cruises sales division, as well as a sales operations support group.
David Craven, who formerly held the position of Queensland business development manager at the cruise line, has been promoted to key account manager.
Craven will work alongside fellow key account manager Shaun Kavanagh to drive strategic planning and marketing support to large accounts within the longstanding Carnival Australia Partnership program.
Heather Pryde will continue in her role as Princess Cruises’ national account manager, overseeing key relationships across Australia and New Zealand.
Elly Eves has been promoted to sales operations specialist, managing a number of Princess Cruises’ more specialised distribution channels and providing distribution operations support including groups, Academy travel consultant training, local co-op marketing activities and addressing customer service escalations.
Working alongside Eves in sales operations is former Victoria, Tasmania and WA business development manager Jackie Schurmann, who moves into a sales specialist role leading a number of IT projects for the cruise line’s sales team.
Brett Wendorf will continue in the position of head of sales operations, leading Princess Cruises’ state managers and sales operations team across Australia and New Zealand.
The changes to the line’s sales team will progressively come into effect this month.
Nick Ferguson, director of sales and marketing at Princess Cruises, said: “The last year has been challenging and uncertain for our sector.
“Yet, during this pause in operation, we identified an opportunity to review how the sales team supports our trade partners day in and day out.
“The changes we are making will maximise the collective experience of our national team and align with our future field sales strategy and engagement with trade partners.”
Princess Cruises has also invested in new tools to help its partners manage the complex process of cancellations and refunds, and to identify and target clients with open future cruise credits.
“We’re also refreshing our ‘find a travel agent’ tool on princess.com to help our clients find a preferred Princess travel agent in their local area,” Ferguson added.
“This tool is unique to the industry and acknowledges the critical role of the travel agent community and the value of the Academy training platform in earning a preferred ‘Commodore’ status.
“We’re also working on some exciting future developments to the Academy training platform and our travel agent interface with OneSource to be launched in the year ahead.”
