The bottom line though is that Carnival is now out of bullets. The only thing left to do is to cut t

Carnival Cruise Lines is now officially out of bullets with regards to their attempt to shift a retail customers cruise purchase point to one of their direct (web, mobile, call) booking channels. Their latest modification to their Value-Add Booking Policy On Incentives Agencies Can Offer Their Clients is so strict that it only allows one to offer a $25.00 incentive in the form of an onboard credit (carnival still gets the $25.00 but it is usally paid from agent commission) or some other agency supplied trinket of equal or lesser value than the $25.00.
Now remember children, if you don t observe Carnival s Value Add Policy or you don t observe Carnival s Online Advertising policies .or you don t observe Carnival s telling you what you can and can t do with your private business earnings .. CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO SELL ANY OF THEIR PRODUCTS . And of course, agencies observe this policy because whether they like it or not, Carnival products comprise a significant portion anna maria island florida hotels of their revenue. Customers literally ask to purchase a Carnival Cruise.
If that were really true, Carnival would eliminate tiered commission rates, eliminate override checks (money received by the agency for meeting performance goals), and eliminate cooperative advertising payments to agencies that have a history of strong performance.
Now a level price across the market does allow agencies to equivalently compete for those increased commission rates, override checks, and cooperative anna maria island florida hotels advertising payments. However, if Carnival is already providing those incentive revenues to bigger agencies in your local market, the flat price really doesn t matter to a smaller anna maria island florida hotels agency because no one knows the smaller agency exists. All they see is the bigger agency whose market visibility is being supplemented by Carnival.
This Last Modification To The Value Add policy is really a shot against the screen scraper rate combing websites (Kayak for example) and the behemoth online sites namely Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz. Those are the companies that can offer value added services like rebate anna maria island florida hotels checks, etc to retail anna maria island florida hotels consumers due to their size and public company status. The bottom line is that any revenue that goes through those sites either via their web presence or through their mobile purchase platforms is a hit against Carnival revenue because Carnival has to pay those sites commissions.
If Carnival anna maria island florida hotels wants to meet Wall Street s marching orders because of this Carnival anna maria island florida hotels Posts Net Loss After Concordia Accident in Italy , then they have to increase book direct revenues. And this modification to the Value Add Policy takes a significant step towards that by further forcing the consumer to think about utilizing a Carnival book direct method because the middle man no longer can offer any significant cost savings.
The bottom line though is that Carnival is now out of bullets. The only thing left to do is to cut the cooperative advertising and override payments to the bigger agencies and that would spell disaster for Carnival because they would then alienate the Omega World Travels and Avoya Travels of the world and thus all but shut off the most effective form of distribution that those agencies offer; personal selling.