The Royal Shaft
I just saw this in Travel Weekly and wanted to make sure all of you are aware of this.
Remember back in October when Royal Caribbean said they were only going to support the traditionalists? I wonder what the 472 Agencies currently at 16% are thinking about RCCL now when they find out their potentially in jeopardy of dropping below 16% because Royal Caribbean is raising their sales quotas to maintain the commission levels these “supporters” currently enjoy?
In the Travel Weekly report it gives an example of an Agency now having to pull in another $500K in sales, otherwise Royal Caribbean is going to cut their commission starting in 2009. (The example being $1 Million in sales to $1.5 Million in sales.)
For these small time Agencies who are already suffering and finding it harder and harder to compete with market share this is a huge slap in the face to the supporters of PATH and other organizations who convinced them that terminating MLM’s was going to fix the illusion they have about why things are so bad for them.
I guess not.
I have to wonder at this point if these Traditionalists are owning up to the promises THEY made to Royal Caribbean to support them.
In another Travel Weekly Report it’s documented that Carnival is still making more per berth than Royal Caribbean, and while I don’t know if this switch to supporting Traditionalists is tied directly to these numbers, it has been mentioned before from the Traditionalists that they increase sales, and add bigger profits as a whole in the industry.
Again, guess not.
It’s also noted that Growth Fund threw overboard some 4,270,000 shares of RCL stock on Friday May 30th, which may or may not have been related to reports of this news circulating. My guess is however that this move is more related to RCL shares hitting new lows than any “Agency Issues”.
There is already speculation that other cruise lines will follow Royal Caribbean’s lead on this and up the commission thresholds for everyone, and quite honestly I hope they do. It should weed out some of the under performing Agencies who are just barely hanging on and make more room for the likes of YTB who’s already been documented to book some $13 Million with Royal Caribbean when the faucet was turned off late last year.
That’s the collective power we have as YTB. It’s also a big reason why only a few suppliers have actually dropped us. Money talks and with $414.5 Million booked in 2007 YTB is well on it’s way to dominating this industry, just like it was promised back in 2001.
I’ll devote more time to this later on in future posts but I wanted to shed just a little light at what I’m currently working on. While the following quote was printed back in September of 1999 and it did talk about another shift in the industry concerning the airlines, I think this quote could ring very true if the speculation does come to fruition concerning commission thresholds in the future.
“”When I entered this industry … I realized that the strong would survive, and strength — many times — equates to size,” he said.
“If you have five or six million dollars in sales or less, you are not going to get the attention from the [Cruise Lines] that you need to survive.”
Hold on to your hats, it’s getting a little windy up on the lido deck! ;-p
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Tags: PATH, Royal Caribbean, Travel Agent Commission, Travel Agent Issues, Travel MLM
