Issues & Trends – November 2010

How a changing P&O UK is attracting more Aussies to its almost-doubled world cruise capacity

By Caroline Gladstone

P&O UK Cruises is already achieving impressive results from its push to increase the number of Australians taking its world cruises.

Australian business, which has hovered around 10 per cent for the past few years, grew to 13 per cent in 2010, according to UK-based managing director Carol Marlow, and is expected to hit the 15 per cent mark in 2012.

Speaking during a visit to Sydney earlier this month, she said forward bookings are also healthy, currently running one-third ahead of this time last year.

Marlow, who cruised on Oriana between Sydney and Brisbane in November, attributed the growth to a change in the timing of an Oriana world cruise, greater cruise options and releasing the annual program in Australia several months earlier than in the past.

This year the company launched its 2012 program here in July, instead of November, to coincide with the launch in UK. This encouraged Australians to book earlier and reap more of the early-booking discounts, and to book a greater variety of sectors on the world cruises.

“We’re getting a whole host of sector business that we haven’t had before, because we brought the brochure out early,” Marlow said.

Australians have also responded positively to P&O’s decision to add more ports in Europe.

The extra ports, which include Limassol (Cyprus), Haifa (Israel), Izmir and Istanbul (Turkey) and Athens have been added to Aurora’s 2012 northbound itinerary in response to requests from Australia’s loyal band of repeat passengers. Currently 34 per cent of Australians taking P&O’s world cruises are “repeaters”, according to Marlow.

“We are keen to grow the business here; we listen to what our passengers say,” she said.
Particularly popular with the local market was the decision to bring the current Oriana world cruise forward by two months.

This meant the ship arrived in Australia in November instead of February, giving Australians the opportunity to board in Sydney and Brisbane and cruise to the UK to arrive a week before Christmas.

Altogether some 600 Australians, comprising one third of the ship’s capacity, cruised out of Sydney and Brisbane earlier this month on a variety of sectors on the six-week voyage to England.

Many of the same passengers, Marlow said, also booked the return world cruise on Arcadia, which is set to depart Southampton on January 5, 2011, giving them a rare chance to experience line voyages on two P&O ships in one season.

“We had nearly 50 per cent more bookings on these two 2010/11 cruises, than we had last year,” she said.

What also surprised the company, she said, was that several passengers also booked Arcadia’s 17-day Christmas cruise around the Western Mediterranean.

“We thought passengers would arrive in the UK and spend Christmas there or in Europe. But many of them are taking the Christmas cruise, then staying on the ship and cruising back to Australia,” she said.

Despite the success of the new timing, there are no plans to permanently change P&O’s world cruise schedules. Marlow said the early Oriana cruise had been a test case and while changes may occur down the track, cruise itineraries are planned several years in advance.

The 2012 world cruise program will follow the traditional timing; that is the ships will depart Southampton in January to arrive in Australia some six weeks later in either February or March.

P&O’s renewed focus on the Australian market is driven by the need to fill its almost doubled world cruise capacity.

For many years it operated two ships simultaneously, each departing Southampton in different directions. However both its extended 2010/11 season and the 2012 program feature four ships, although only three call at Australia.

Marlow said one of the challenges faced by the company in attracting new Australian passengers is distinguish-ing the UK world cruise product from the local P&O-branded product.

“Passengers who have sailed with us are well aware of the differences,” she said, “but others – travel agents and customers – are not.”

She said a new range of marketing material, including brochures and an enhanced website, will be launched in January 2011. New branding will feature lines of latitude and longitude to reinforce the world cruising aspect; brochures will have richer colours and while the rising sun logo will be retained, the new tagline will be “Discover a Different World”.

Marlow said she has been working with her Australian colleagues to make it easier to access the UK product.

Travel agents have been able to book world cruises using the Polar Online system for several months now, and next year they will be able to complete training modules through the P&O Academy system. Modules will cover all seven ships in the UK fleet.

Five of the line’s seven ships cater for families; the two child-free ships are Arcadia and Adonia.
Adonia, which was formerly Minerva II and is currently sailing as Royal Princess, will join the fleet in May next year. It will replace ship Artemis, which leaves the fleet in April.

This year P&O added the new 3100 passenger ship Azura, the largest in the fleet. It also launched new contemporary menus and a new entertainment, provided by the Headliners Theatre Company.Marlow said the changes have been well received and are reflected in more positive results in passenger surveys.