Travel Trends with Dan Christian
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Travel Trends with Dan Christian
A Spotlight on Ocean Cruise Marketing Strategies with Nick Charrow, Director of Media, Princess Cruises
Discover the magic behind Princess Cruises with our special guest, Nick Charrow, Director of Media, as he shares his captivating journey from creative and digital marketing to his influential role in the cruise industry. You'll gain insights into how Princess Cruises crafts a comprehensive vacation experience with its impressive fleet of 16 ships. Nick highlights the unique features that set the brand apart, such as the medallion class product, which uses wearable technology to elevate the guest experience. Whether you're a cruise veteran or a curious newcomer, there's something here for everyone.
Our conversation explores the strategic integration of marketing channels at Princess Cruises, emphasizing an omnichannel approach to effectively reach a diverse audience. Learn how traditional and digital media harmoniously blend to showcase the wonders of cruising, and discover the role of affiliate marketing in driving growth and sales. If you're curious about the dynamics of the cruise industry, this discussion is a treasure trove of information.
As we explore emerging trends, we dive into how social media and influencers are reshaping perceptions, with even unexpected moments, like Post Malone wearing a Princess pin, adding to the brand's visibility. Whether you're an aspiring cruise industry professional or a seasoned traveler, Nick offers valuable advice on breaking into the field.
👉 Listen to A Spotlight on Ocean Cruise Marketing Strategies with Princess Cruises Now
🔥 Season 4 Title Sponsors: Stay 22, TravelAI, Propellic and Northern Soul by Landsby
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Hello everyone and welcome to Travel Trends. This is your host, dan Christian, and I'm thrilled to continue our deep dive into ocean cruises, with today's focus on princess cruises. Now, of course, we have been trying to cover the full spectrum in our conversations as we do our first deep dive into Ocean Cruises as part of Season 4, sponsored by our friends at Jeb Commerce who, if you're looking for an affiliate program, if you don't understand what affiliate programs are or you need to optimize your existing program.
Speaker 1:They are absolutely the partners In fact, they are actually the partner for Princess Cruises and they kindly sponsored this series and we greatly appreciate the team at JEB who have set up a dedicated page for all of our listeners at jebcommerce slash travel trends, where you can find out more information about getting an affiliate program set up or optimizing an existing program that you have. I've known this team for many years. I highly respect them and encourage everyone listening to this that needs to generate more revenue which is pretty much everyone to go check out Jeb Commerce and learn more. Now let's get into our conversation today with Nick Cherow, who is the Director of Marketing at Princess Cruises. Now, interestingly, we have not had someone in that role as part of these conversations, and we thought it was sort of an ideal opportunity to talk to someone on the marketing side, like we have done on the sales side and also on product as well.
Speaker 1:As you heard last week when we spoke to scenic cruises, we've also obviously covered Virgin Voyages when we kicked off these conversations, and then we heard from Regent Seven Seas as well. So those are our four ocean cruise companies. And then next week we're going to be introducing you to the team from Herdegurton Expeditions, also known as HX. We're going to be speaking to their CEO and their chief expedition officer, so you can look forward to that episode to round out our cruise series. To focus on expedition Now. Hopefully you're already following us on all the social channels, because we do post clips and highlights on Instagram, linkedin and YouTube, and we also send out a monthly newsletter with a roundup of all of our episodes for the month and our travels coming up. So make sure you go to TravelTrendsPodcastcom and register to receive our next newsletter. And with that, I would like to introduce you to our next guest, nick Chero, the Director of Marketing at Princess Cruises. Thanks for joining us, nick. Great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, dan, I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 1:And I think everyone got a good idea from that introduction about your background in the cruise industry. Obviously, you've been with Princess for nine years and you're the Director of Marketing, and on our cruise series that we're featuring you on, there has been a number of executives, but no one that's been specifically focused on marketing, and that's what I was particularly looking forward to in our conversation today. So I'm keen to start and give our audience a bit of background on your role at Princess and then, if you wouldn't mind, sharing with us too how you came into the cruise industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course I'm happy to start wherever you like.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So let's start with your background. How did you end up?
Speaker 2:in the cruise industry. Yeah, I think you know it was a bit of a circuitous path getting to where I am today. I feel like if I were to kind of think back, you know, 12, 13, 14 years ago, when I really started to gravitate towards marketing, I wouldn't have necessarily expected, like Princess and doing what I'm doing and being able to travel and talk to all these great partners. I don't think I would have expected it, but it definitely kind of came into view for me at a certain point. So, having you know, started my career actually kind of on more of the creative side back in like the 2008 2009, starting to shoot weddings, building websites for myself, getting out there and marketing myself, building kind of a client list.
Speaker 2:I started to kind of get a handle on kind of the marketing side of running a photography business and at the same time, I was kind of assessing what I wanted in life and knew that like there was only so many years that wedding photography might sustain me and went back to school, got an MBA and kind of got my foot in the door at a few smaller e-commerce companies and started being able to get my hands into every aspect of marketing, whether it was affiliate email, print, running a lot of digital marketing campaigns, e-commerce, and we were at the. I was at these companies where I didn't really have like agency support and I was just the one doing all the things with you know rather small team of folks. So and then I, having lived in Santa Clarita for quite some time, I knew Princess was it was, it was there as an option and I ended up finding kind of the right, the perfect position at the perfect time and have have really loved it ever since.
Speaker 1:That's terrific and for many of our listeners, I'm sure they've heard of Princess Cruises and on our cruise series we've had executives from Scenic and Virgin Voyages and Region 7C, so we've really been focused on ocean, even though I want to also highlight river and expedition. But I'd love to get your overview of Princess Cruises. For anyone who's listening to this that doesn't know Princess Cruises. Would you mind giving everyone a bit of a better understanding of what Princess Cruises is and does?
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I think, just being on the marketing front, I can tell you that fortunately, you know, brand awareness for Princess Cruises is quite substantial, like you know, I'd say I saw nine out of 10 people would have heard of Princess.
Speaker 2:Maybe they don't necessarily understand what we're all about, but I think you know we're not just kind of a cruise brand or a cruise vacation.
Speaker 2:We are really kind of a viable vacation option for, you know, a pretty wide swath of not only the US and North America but like a global brand with 16 coming on, 17 ships that are all over the world. And so I think you know what there there's, you know, a whole whole Trevor, treasure trove of information and aspects to our brand that really kind of bring it together. But I think the the fact that we're kind of destination leaders across the globe, offering like unique itineraries beyond kind of what we do really well, like we're amazing in Alaska, amazing in the Caribbean, have such great selection on the West Coast and we have great new ships. But we also have like wonderful cruises that go off to go to far off places, and whether it's, you know, world cruises that go to far off places, and whether it's world cruises, or Panama Canal, south America. The world is yours here at Princess and you tie that to the onboard experience that we have on our ships and I mean you got some magic there.
Speaker 1:That's great and I've certainly known about the brand for a long time. I'm not a cruiser and it's not my background, but part of the reason we wanted to do this series was to profile cruise companies so that our audience could get a better understanding of what sets them apart. You've mentioned a few of the different itineraries you offer and destinations and obviously I want to get a bit more into that, talk a little bit about the ships. But I think probably actually a really great place to start is your customer profile, since you are a marketer and I'm sure it goes through your mind every day as you're coming into the office that you know how are you going to reach more travelers and how are you going to convince especially new. That's one of the things that stood out to me too, nick, in coming into this is the the importance of converting people who've never cruised before, like myself.
Speaker 2:So tell us, if you wouldn't mind, what does a typical Princess Cruise customer look like? Well, you know, I think that maybe for other brands whether they're big, bigger or maybe smaller, like they might have like a persona of like who their customer is. And sure, we definitely have some of those profiles that help us kind of like contextualize who we're speaking to. But I think, at the end of the day, when you go onto our ships and I've been lucky enough to be, I think I've got next month I will have 15 cruises under my belt, so I'm really excited to reach elite status as a princess cruiser but when you go onto our ships, what you start to realize is like you have people from kind of every walk of life and there's certainly, like you know, kind of maybe some core demos that are pretty consistent across the board.
Speaker 2:But you know what you might walk into on a.
Speaker 2:If you go on an Alaska cruise, like you might see a little bit more families, you might see a slightly younger audience, you might see a few more kids, but if you're going somewhere a little bit more off the beaten path, you might see a slightly different audience that is looking for, you know, maybe they're more recently retired, they're empty nesters and they're ready to take on the world, and so what we're trying to think about is we have kind of this wonderful positioning to speak to, you know, kind of a large group of potential cruisers, vacationers, that isn't necessarily going to fit neatly into this persona or that persona, so it's kind of like a non-answer in some ways.
Speaker 2:But I think, you know, if you're, you know, coming from a North America perspective, which is kind of the area that I'm focused on over here at Princess, it is really about over here at Princess. It is really about attracting audiences that have the means to afford a vacation. There's a lot of value in our vacation that you know, have some of that time and really like those are kind of the key qualifiers to consumers that we want to get our message in front of. We want to be you know, it's hard to be a brand for everyone, because the challenge on the flip side is that if, if you are, if you're saying everything, then are you saying nothing as a brand? But I think what we're doing well is being able to attract that a wider audience, while still having kind of core differentiators within our um, within our product.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that Cause. One of the things I'm very keen to know is what sets princess cruises apart from the other cruise lines in the industry, and as I was preparing for our conversation, I was picking up on some of the messaging that was very much around service, of course, which is important across the board, but the one that really stood out for me was value, which is always an interesting word to use, especially even though that's what every traveler is looking for, but that seemed to be one of the key reasons that people would take a princess trip. That is kind of vacations at value or best cruise line for your money, and that stood out to me as maybe part of the reason that the brand has such great awareness is because it's accessible, and and so tell us a little bit about that. So what does set princess apart? Why would people choose princess over some of the options? Other options are out there.
Speaker 2:Personally I have a perspective on that as a Princess cruise aficionado and someone who's passionate about cruising myself. Our family loves to cruise and so I kind of have my own experiences as to how Princess is set apart from the competitive set or the vacation set and I think, kind of as a brand representative, I have a kind of another layer to that. And so just I think, to start there, I think when you look at it on paper, I mean when you talk about service and you and if, if you haven't heard too much about you know, the medallion class product aboard our ship with this wearable technology that really kind of unlocks just different experiences, removes friction, allows for kind of that seamless vacation, to get more vacation out of your vacation is definitely like no one can argue with that, like uh and and and no one can compete with that in the cruise industry. So I think that really um plays into how that melds with service and delivering service. That you know, kind of. I think one of the things that we like to think about is kind of the delivering kind of VIP like service. That might be something that a smaller ship might be able to accommodate, but on kind of a mid to larger class of ship. So I think that's definitely kind of one core differentiator.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing is that the global destination coverage. I think there are lots of brands out there that are maybe doing really really well in the Caribbean, or even vacation options, right Like vacations that are really well suited for Caribbean vacations or Europe vacations or beach vacations, and I think we have the footprint globally that stands out from the competitive set in a space where our product on our ships are consistent across the board. So I think that that's really kind of another aspect. And then you know, like food and dining and the options we have on board there as well are certainly elevated. We've got some great experiences, whether it's 360 dining or O'Malley's, which is kind of like a bit of a surprise and delight in terms of how much our guests love O'Malley's Irish pub on board.
Speaker 2:Then, on a personal front and I certainly think that there's a little bit of overlap here which is, I mean, we do Alaska better than anyone else.
Speaker 2:We're the number one brand in Alaska and we take more people there than anyone else.
Speaker 2:I might need to fact check that one a little bit, but the last time I heard the last data point I've heard like, legitimately, we take more people to Alaska than any other vacation provider, and that's where I usually start, Like one of the things that I end up finding myself talking about with friends and family that are interested in cruising that are first time cruisers is, you know, like if they're on the fence about cruising, the first thing I talk to them about is do you, is Alaska on your bucket list or in your wish list? And they usually say yeah and I say OK. Well, the best way to see Alaska is by by cruise multiple destinations. Unpack once takes a headache out of travel, and then the best brand to do that with is Princess, and that's where most of our new to cruisers start is sailing to Alaska, and so we just deliver a great kind of enriching onboard experience as well as offering them you know all of the sites and experiences on land as well.
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Speaker 1:Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:I was also having to look through the ships themselves, since I wasn't very familiar with the entire fleet and I was, I guess, quite impressed to see there's 17 ships, there's two new ships and you guys have one Condé Nast Traveler's top large ship cruise line, and I guess that's one other thing I wanted to ask you I know you mentioned some of the pubs and some of the features on the ship Is there something that is consistently unique about Princess with regards to the ships, in terms of the onboard venues or the way that you handle your operations?
Speaker 1:I take your point about Alaska. Obviously, that's such an amazing destination and it's one that I'm very keen to do at some point. Might be my first cruise and it may be a princess cruise, so let's tell me a little more about the ship, though, to, uh, not only intrigue me but also our listeners, to get a better understanding of what the onboard experience is like on a princess cruise ship yeah, I think one consistent feature on our ships that continues to be kind of beloved by our, our guests, um is is the Piazza, um, uh, uh.
Speaker 2:It's the kind of heartbeat of our ship, if you will.
Speaker 2:It's, uh, it's in the in all, on all ships.
Speaker 2:It's the kind of central area that spans, you know, at least three uh, uh floors and it's kind of where you can find everything from onboard entertainment to singers, dancers, different classes, games happening, and what's really kind of just like I don't know like heartwarming about that too, is that the, the, the guests on board, the energy in that area of our ship that not only like is there all this entertainment happening in the on our ship, and kind of the center of it all, in kind of the center of it all, you have different restaurants and coffee shops and bars that are all kind of surrounding this area, and it just really like as a flow, as a consumer going or as a guest or traveler going from walking, you know, maybe you're walking from our, you know theater and you're walking to, you know, let's say, play bingo at the back of the ship, typically like you're walking through this, the, the piazza, and you get, you know every time you are going from one location the next, you get a little bit of this, a taste of of the uh energy happening and I think you know beyond, kind of like the restaurants that we have on ships and uh, you know like spas and and gyms and and all these great experiences.
Speaker 2:At the center of it all is the, the Piazza, and so I think that's like a pretty consistent thing that I, I personally love, my family loves, but I know also, as a brand, I hear a lot that our consumers and guests appreciate that as well. And then there's like a whole host of other things kind of happening in and around the ship that are definitely kind of exciting as well. But I'll pause there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, I mean, given the number of ships that you have. And the other thing I wanted to ask you about was the global profile that you alluded to earlier. Clearly you've got a strength in the Americas, as you mentioned Caribbean, but also the West Coast of USA and Canada. As I was going through your website, you know there's everything from Tahiti to your point of Japan, so further field destinations, even like Antarctica and South America, these epic voyages. So I guess I'd love to hear, outside of, I guess, the Caribbean and North America, what would be some of the other top selling itineraries that Princess operates. And I'm also keen to know with your customer base how many of them are actually Americans versus other global citizens from the UK or Australia. Just in terms of the makeup of the people on board, I take your earlier point that it is a very diverse group, so it's not like it's just one target persona, but very keen to get an idea of some of the other destinations you offer and some of the audience that you attract from countries outside the US.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think, when you look at these other destinations that we travel to South America, antarctica, australia, new Zealand, the Norwegian fjordlands region, uh, fiordlands, uh.
Speaker 2:Mediterranean, uh. British Isles, uh, the Baltic region, uh, the, the sourcing can vary quite dramatically from place to place and tends to reflect kind of the, the, the nearest, closest major. You know, hub, I guess, if you will so certainly like, when you think about our European cruises, we might have folks from the UK primarily helping to support those destinations, or more Australians, those uh destinations, or more Australians, uh, um, hopping on cruises out of Australia, New Zealand. So it does kind of it is dependent on, uh exactly where they're, uh, these ships are, are, are located, but definitely um, north Americans are, are, are traveling more and they're um. You know, I think there's to some degree the I know revenge travel is, is, um, something that is, is a thing coming out of, out of COVID and um we're, we're seeing people wanting to get out there. But I think it's also sustaining too. While there are some logistics to think about, it's a little bit easier than you know backpacking there, flying there, etc.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting, given everything you've just mentioned, both in the terms of the destinations, the ships, the types of customers that are attracted to Princess, given all that diversity, I'm really keen to ask you about the marketing campaigns that you implement to reach and connect and convince people to travel, because one of the things you've also mentioned in our conversation is that it would appear that you see competition from outside the cruise industry, that you are focused on convincing people that this is the best way to vacation, which is something that we haven't actually discussed with some of the other conversations, which is there's a bigger market out there that you can tap into, beyond just the existing cruise audience, and trying to convince them to come across from other cruises or obviously, to build repeat, but essentially to try and compete against other options that you have our customers have for their vacation. So I'd love for you to walk us through some of the marketing campaigns and activity you've been focused on at Princess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know I don't want to make it seem like it's like you know, my marketing campaign specifically is like we have a whole team of wonderful marketers here at Princess that really work together, whether it's coming from creative teams, our media teams, our brand teams, our product teams, like we have definitely a lot of contributors that help us kind of make our marketing sing. That help us kind of make our marketing sing Um, but I think, uh, this, you know the, the, the um, the trajectory our brand has been on, certainly like the last couple of years and and really kind of focusing on now and our it's kind of propelling us into the future, is this, this uh, this kind of like backbone of love, right, like the thing that has for those folks that are a little bit more aware of our brand, or maybe our Gen Xers or Baby Boomers. They grew up with the TV show called the Love Boat that was very popular in the seventies and eighties and that was the, the brand that the ship that that um, that TV show was uh, was associated to, was the uh, was Patricia, uh, princess, uh, and so that really kind of was a loudspeaker for our brand to start to have mass reach and mass awareness, and so the last, definitely like year plus, we've been really trying to kind of own what our brand, like the DNA of our brand, which is love. And a lot of these cruise brands are and travel brands might have different kind of singular words that they're focused on or different passion points that they're focused on and messaging to their consumer.
Speaker 2:But I think the thing that really sets us apart as we think about marketing and messaging to their consumer, but I think the thing that really sets us apart as we think about marketing and messaging, is love, and not just love from like a romantic love, but it could be the love of travel, the love of food, the love of experiencing something new, the love of doing something with your friends and your family that you never thought you could do.
Speaker 2:So we think that that's a really natural place for us to be, and what we've been focused on as a brand and as a marketing team is bringing that to life through different levers, whether it's bringing a new commercial spot to light that really kind of reinforces all of these different elements that speak to what our brand is really kind of centering around, which is this concept of of love and so, uh, that, that campaign, that branding that you probably have seen a little bit around our website and social media I think it's really, uh, prevalent there as well as, um, I love this, or, you might see, come feel the love. It really is something that we're gravitating towards and is going to be continued in the future here.
Speaker 1:That's great. Tell us some of the specific marketing channels that you leverage at Princess. I mean, given you're across all the marketing activity and I respect obviously there's a wider team but tell us what are some of the most important marketing channels for Princess to be able to get the message out. Are you doing um a lot of digital activity? Tell us a bit more about how you, how you, how you approach the channels.
Speaker 2:Well, it's definitely has evolved as well, and I think one of the things that, um, certainly we recognize coming out of, uh, of COVID and and just some of the things that certainly we recognize coming out of COVID and just some of the things that we recognize just as market changes, is that we need to get in front of larger audiences.
Speaker 2:Right, and while I think there's definitely a move to digital and streaming and we're certainly playing in those spaces, we're also not forgetting that there are still a lot of consumers that are consuming linear content, linear TV content, linear TV so whether it's by our TV buys happening in across ABC and ESPN, college sports, or our presence in local TV, local radio, these are channels that get in front of still pretty large audiences, and I think digital is kind of a no brainer. We need to be there, whether it's in paid search, whether it's in social, whether it's in you know what we call kind of display advertising, when you think about visiting websites like TripAdvisor or going on to into Google, like we're there. That's where consumers are still consuming a lot of content, but we're not forgetting some of those traditional marketing channels that can bring us a lot of visibility.
Speaker 1:Now I appreciate you explaining that.
Speaker 1:I think that's where you know the omchannel approach is always difficult to track all the various touch points on a consumer journey, but clearly you have to be in multiple places and then, given you have a digital background, I'm sure you're very focused on the ROI on each of those, what the return on investment is going to be for all your marketing activity.
Speaker 1:There's one channel in particular I wanted to ask you about, which is affiliate marketing, Because one of the points of connectivity between us is that we've both worked with JEB Commerce and clearly I know Jamie Birch. He's been on our podcast in season one and he's a friend and a colleague and I worked with him for more than a decade in his team and I couldn't think more highly of the JEB Commerce team, which I know the executive team has now taken over the business, so Jake is the new CEO and I've always have respected and admired Jake and he kindly came on as a sponsor for our series, which thank you again to the JB team and Jake in particular for getting on board with travel trends and this cruise series. But interestingly, that is actually the point of connectivity is that you work closely with JB Commerce as well, and so I'd love to get a bit understanding about that relationship and, specifically, affiliate marketing and how you build affiliate marketing into your overall marketing strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to.
Speaker 2:We've worked with the JB team for a while now and they have have really kind of helped us in our affiliate journey from kind of like a crawl walk to what I feel like is is a good run.
Speaker 2:I think affiliate marketing is so broad it's actually been, I think, pretty popular these days, whether in social media it makes it seem like everybody can be an affiliate, and certainly that's the case.
Speaker 2:But to do it as well as like the JV team does it, it really takes a lot of expertise and so I think what we're doing really well in that affiliate space is can kind of combining the best of the tactics and applying them towards selling cruise, and so that could be meaning working with deal affiliates, working with content affiliates, working with social affiliates, working with cashback and rewards sites to really kind of get them all singing together and then building that on top of a lot of these other marketing channels, whether it's email marketing or digital marketing.
Speaker 2:They all kind of work together in harmony and we really do like leveraging the affiliate channel because the other thing that affiliate by nature it is more of a performance marketing channel and so much of what we do can be upper funnel, mid funnel. But when it comes down to it, what's great about the affiliate channel is you know you're paying for that performance, and I think that that's what the JAB team is expertly positioned to do for us. So, yeah, we appreciate them and we definitely value affiliate as a part of our broader ecosystem.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I appreciate you sharing that because I'm still amazed at how few companies and travel really leverage affiliate programs successfully. I mean, in my career I've implemented affiliate programs across a number of organizations and constantly amazed that it's a surprise and then the results they see from it. So I was quite impressed to know that that was a strength for you, which is one of the things I definitely wanted to touch on in our conversation.
Speaker 1:But there's one more question I had on marketing and I want to get into some of the trends that you're seeing, and one other question I had about marketing that always comes up or came up for me, which is why I want to ask the question to you, which is this concept of B2B versus B2C and how do you approach trade versus direct?
Speaker 1:And clearly you have a lot of people working in sales that are driving B2B and oftentimes I found that it was the marketers that were expected to be the ones to own and drive B2C and to try and balance the portfolio into kind of shift market share towards direct. And what I always found was that you know the two of them working together in harmony was actually the most effective, which is that you know when you do great B2C marketing, it lifts your B2B business. If you have great B2B partners, you end up getting direct business as a result of it as well. So I'd love to hear your view on what has been most effective for driving growth at Princess Cruises. Has it been B2B, b2c or a combination of both?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I think one thing that people are always surprised by whether it's like our partners that are coming to support us or if it's new team members that are coming to work at Princess is they're usually surprised to know how important travel agents are to the overall health of our business.
Speaker 2:Like you know, that symbiotic relationship I like kind of what you're saying is that like, the better we do our jobs marketing consumers, you know, the better businesses across the board, and vice versa. I think the one thing that, like you know, certainly marketers can get a little bit myopic about is that what, like one individual channel is moving the needle and in fact and it's, you know, it's a very considered purchase. A vacation is a considered purchase. It takes a while to figure out what you want to do, where you want to go, how to book, et cetera, and so the more that we can kind of work together to nudge, you know, consumers along the way, the better that we're going to do, whether they're going to book through this channel or that channel. Really, kind of telling our story and telling it consistently is what's going to kind of help us everybody do better.
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Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's, I think, a lot happening in kind of the trend space, I guess, and there's probably a handful of ways to answer this. I think the one thing that I, from a marketing perspective, see the most is really kind of allowing cruise to be a more common topic for new to cruise, whether it's, I think, well, you can see it just in the volume of travel influencers. Just in the volume of travel influencers, cruise influencers, when you go onto YouTube and you want to research a princess cruise ship or any other aspect of our product, there are dozens and dozens of content creators with videos about that, with reels about that, with posts about that. There are dozens and dozens of princess social princess communities in Facebook. And, in fact, just the other day, we were having dinner as a team and one of us got an alert on our phone and it was like hey, post Malone is wearing a princess pin on his hat at the VMAs, the MTV Video Music Awards, and he just hugged Taylor Swift and we're like what, how, how did this happen? And, like you know, we're messaging like pr teams or messaging internal folks, agency partners, and like what's going on here? Who, who, how did this come to be and we still don't know. But the uh, I actually just looked at it today and the one clip of Taylor Swift and Post Malone embracing after they won for best collaboration got 14 million views. And he's wearing of you know.
Speaker 2:That's certainly, like you know, of course, kind of coming from traditional TV, but where it's catching fire is in social, and one of the things that's great about our brand is our iconic brand mark, our Sea Witch. Like it's unlike anything. It's very classic and beautiful, and so social media is kind of giving not only our brand kind of additional visibility. But I think one of the things that is so exciting about time we're living in is, like a lot of people question, like, what is a cruise really like? And and and and word of mouth is one of those really important catalysts to to getting people to to book a cruise, like it now is in the hands of everybody and and is super accessible to know what it's really like. So I think that's to me, one of the biggest trends out there in travel and maybe is relatively obvious, but I don't know if it's like underlined enough in what we do.
Speaker 1:And then one other thing I wanted to ask you and then I'm keen to get your take on some advice for other people that are looking to get into the cruise industry. But one of the other elements that we haven't covered is technology, and so I'm very curious to know it came up in our conversation with Virgin Voyages, because they have an app that they utilize for all of their cruisers that addresses some of the pain points of the on-ship experience, like trying to coordinate people getting off the ship or making announcements, and so I'd love to know what Princess Cruises is doing when it comes to technology or innovations, and maybe how you're integrating that into some of the operations to improve the guest experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll do my best here to explain this, but I really should have like our product experts to come speak to this. But I think I did talk a little bit about it, about our differentiator here. But it is that medallion that really kind of improves that cruise experience and kind of marries technology with, like your vacation, like everybody's gotten used to ordering ahead at Starbucks or getting food delivered to them via like Grubhub or Postmates or Uber, right, so like the technology that we're kind of all playing with day to day. That makes our lives a little bit more frictionless, a little bit better. In most cases in other vacation experiences kind of stopped happening, and so with Princess that doesn't, there's that like seamlessness, so it helps you get on chip a little bit faster, it helps you order drinks wherever you are, it helps you unlock your door, it helps you to find your friends and your family and communicate with them on ship.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of these other brands are doing something that's maybe close, but I think the level of integration that happens on our ship is so far beyond that that it really kind of is is uh, in some cases, you know, dare I say, untouchable, but um, I think that that's one aspect of it.
Speaker 2:And you know, the funny thing is, um, when you get off the ship it's actually like when you're done with your vacation where you kind of feel it the most is, yeah, when you, when you step off the ship, when you're, your car door doesn't automatically unlock for you, when you still, you know when you want, you want to drink on your couch while watching a football game, like your drink doesn't just come to you where you, you know can't necessarily, uh, you know, um, get get into, uh, uh, yeah, where you don't have to stand in line as much for things like those kind of real, like back to reality kind of experiences actually heighten the, the seamlessness that you typically can have while and the connectivity that you can have on on our ships. So I think that that's certainly um I know we talked a little bit about differentiators, but definitely is is top of mind.
Speaker 1:No, it's really interesting and, given that you've had a incredible career already in cruise, but you're probably you're still a young guy and you've, you know, 10 years of princess, many of the people I've spoken to have been like 30 years in the cruise industry, so you've got a bright future ahead of you, I'm sure, but what would you say in terms of advice for someone else that's looking to start their career in the cruise industry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, depending on kind of what aspect of the cruise industry they're looking into, I think the thing that I've had the pleasure of doing multiple times I think I probably had five or six interns over my tenure here at Princess, and actually one of them is currently working on my team in digital and media specifically and so I would my recommendation for anyone interested in getting into the cruise industry at least like from an out of coming out of college is getting an internship.
Speaker 2:However, for folks that may be a little bit more mid career and and trying to get into to to the cruise space, you know, I think there are other options and I think it's about looking at the skillset that you're you're looking to, uh, that that you think you looking at the skillset that you think you need in order to kind of get the position that you want, and making sure, like I would say, that's kind of what I did.
Speaker 2:I didn't have an internship, I didn't have necessarily on paper, like the perfect person for a position in the cruise industry, but what I did work on was trying to continually improve my skill set and challenge myself in ways that would ultimately be net positive so that when I found the right opportunity to go all in, and so I think that that's what I'd recommend. Uh, what I'd recommend, in addition to like the other thing, is like we've also had people work here for princes that have. If you have a passion for cruise, that's also really good. Like we, we love having seasoned travelers uh, seasoned cruisers come into our business as well.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure there's many people on listening to this that are avid cruisers. So, on that note, for those that are being inspired to either travel with Princess or even collaborate and work with Princess, where should our listeners reach out? How should they engage with you or Princess after listening to this podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think probably the best place singular place is on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn, shoot me a message and let's chat. Cool, that's great.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for making the time for this. It was a real pleasure to speak to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, likewise, it was great speaking with you as well, dan.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining us on this latest episode of travel trends. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Nick Charo from Princess Cruises as we continue our deep dive into ocean cruising. On our next episode, we will have the CEO, as well as the chief expedition officer for Herdegurt and Expeditions. That's also known as HX and that will round out our cruise series. But given the interest both from guests and partners and listeners, we're definitely going to continue this into season five and expand our focus into river and continue on luxury cruises as well. So feel free to reach out to us If you're interested in partnering with us for next season. You can find out all the information on our website at traveltrendspodcastcom to get involved with us, and we look forward to hearing from you and joining us on the next episode. Until then, thanks so much for listening. Safe travels.
