Travel advisors were disappointed but not surprised that Norwegian Cruise Line will reinstate noncommissionable fares (NCFs) in 2024 after rolling it out a year ago.
2023 was a strong year for cruise bookings, which made it challenging to show that NCL's program to incentivize more bookings was paying off, they said.
"With everyone doing well, we likely didn't have the same opportunity to show them disproportionate love. Advisors were simply trying to keep up," said Alex Sharpe, president of Signature Travel Network.
Travel agencies have been so busy this year that agents have been more focused on "order-taking" rather than "order-making" to sell particular products, said Matthew Eichorst, president of Expedia Cruises.
"The perfect storm is we've all been so busy responding to the business. The business came back so strongly that agents probably aren't proactive out there at all," he said. "It was probably bad timing."
Anthony Hamawy, president of Cruise.com, said the program's staying power faded when NCL's competitors didn't follow its lead.
"The day they started it, we knew it was only a matter of when they were going to stop it," said Hamawy. "It only took probably a week to figure out that no other cruise line was going to follow. You need everyone buying in to go that way."
NCL senior vice president of sales John Chernesky told top advisors gathered in New York for its President's Club meeting on Dec. 14 the the line would discontinue its program to pay commission on the full cruise fare. The line will reinstate NCFs after March 31, enabling agents to continue making larger commissions until the presumed end of Wave season.
For the last year, the program rewarded travel advisors with commissions on the full cruise fare when booking sailings at least 120 days in advance. To become eligible, advisors had to earn NCL's approval for their marketing plan. About 2,500 agencies were admitted to the program.
While the initiative served the purpose of generating more agency bookings and helping put money in the pockets of travel advisors as they were recovering from the pandemic, the line decided to phase out the program and repurpose the funds used to support it toward marketing or relationships with agencies, said Chernesky.
"It was not generating the interest or the focus on NCL that we would have liked, ultimately," he said.