Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Setting Sail with Loyalty: How Cruises.com Rewards is Charting a New Course in Cruise Industry Engagement
Cruises.com has unveiled Cruises.com Rewards, the cruise industry’s first points-based loyalty program, offering travelers the flexibility to earn and redeem points on any cruise booked through their platform. This loyalty program is unique as it enables cruisers to immediately redeem their points for onboard credit, cash back, merchandise, and more, enhancing the overall cruise experience.
Loyalty360 CEO, Mark Johnson, recently sat down with Rosemarie Reed, Senior Vice President of Marketing for cruises.com, who has played a pivotal role in the launch of Cruises.com Rewards. This episode of Brand Stories highlights various key factors in how to create a successful loyalty program and best practices to keeping customers engaged through the program.
Welcome back to our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series, the Brand Stories Edition. It's great to have you here with us every Thursday and in this episode we're going to be discussing and focusing on brand partnerships and customer loyalty programs. Partnerships are a significant component of a successful customer loyalty program, yet many brands struggle to align their partnership strategies. In the world of travel, creating a synergistic program between travel companies such as airlines, car rentals and hotels can be fraught with challenges. Otas online travel agents of which there are plenty and on which brands depend on due to their significant market presence often want to brand their own marketing efforts and customer loyalty programs. Meanwhile, the brands themselves may want to work more closely with the customers, which can create some dissonance. This tension can lead to friction with the OTAs. Creating a truly synergistic partnership and travel has been a challenge Until now.
Speaker 1:Cruisescom recently launched its first customer loyalty program and a key piece of the vision and early success of the program is due to how they are working with the cruise lines in a way that complements both Cruisescom and the cruise lines themselves. In this episode of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty Brand Stories series, we're going to hear from Rosemarie Reed. She's the Senior Vice President of Marketing for Cruisescom, she's going to walk us through the unique vision and approach to their customer loyalty program. Rosemarie, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. How are you?
Speaker 2:Doing great. How are you Thank you for offering this opportunity?
Speaker 1:For those who may not be familiar, can you give us a short overview of Cruisescom, and can you also tell us a little bit more about your role within the organization?
Speaker 2:Sure. So Cruisescom is really your go-to for all of the best deals for your cruises. We also offer expert advice, so it's like this one-stop shop. You can go to compare all the different cruise options that you may want to take for your vacation, all in one place, and then you get to see all the offers and the exclusive deals that we put on top of the value we provide. If you chose to call, you'd speak to one of our vacation experts, who will guide you through the process and help you make the best decision when choosing a cruise that's right for you and your lifestyle and your budget.
Speaker 2:So my role with cruisescom? I oversee e-commerce and marketing for the brand, as well as some other brands within our portfolio. I started out my career at the Walt Disney Company many, many years ago I won't say how many, because that'll reveal my age and so I think from the very beginning of my career, I learned what it meant to provide a quality experience for customers, and that is what I think the foundation of loyalty is built on is the experience you provide.
Speaker 1:What inspired Cruisescom to launch a points-based rewards program and how does it differentiate from other loyalty programs in the cruise and travel industries?
Speaker 2:Great question. So it really came about because we wanted to deepen our relationship with our customers, so it wasn't just to stand up a loyalty program. To us, this is much more than that. This is a way to engage with customers and be able to communicate with them outside of just the booking process. It's, of course, meant to drive loyalty and have them come back to us because they've had such a great experience, but you'll notice that we've built features as part of the rewards program that are unlike another traditional loyalty program.
Speaker 2:What's great about it is, if you are a cruiser or you've cruised before, you can still earn status when you book with us at the cruise line. So you're still going to earn towards your loyalty benefits by booking with us and you're getting our rewards on top of it by booking with us and you're getting our rewards on top of it. So I would say it's a compliment to what you typically would get, which is different than if you booked with another online travel agency or an aggregator I don't want to name them, but those sites that you can go to and see all the hotels in one place or flights all in one place you may not receive the benefits or the status, they might not recognize that transaction. If you are, you know a specific status with an airline or a hotelier because you booked through a third party, whereas with us, our cruise lines, are our partners and you will get full recognition for that, for that transaction cruising is a unique travel experience, as you know, with a longer planning cycle compared to other vacations.
Speaker 1:How does your loyalty program keep customers engaged between bookings?
Speaker 2:So I would say that Shift happens right, like there's different shifts that happen for different reasons throughout consumer behaviors that change, and what we saw during the pandemic, during the pause, was everybody had to go online to book everything or to buy anything.
Speaker 2:So you're buying toilet paper through Instacart and having that delivered I mean pretty much everybody had to go. Even if you wanted to buy a washing machine or a television, you were going online to browse options versus walking into a retail location, which is what people were traditionally used to. And so we recognize that, with that change in behavior, we wanted to find a way to keep customers engaged, not just with us in between bookings, but in general, because they find value in what we bring to them and in their everyday lives. So we've added all kinds of features within our rewards program that are not related to just booking with us. It is, you know, tips and advice that we offer to you. We bring exclusive content, whether that be interviews with cruise line executives or with onboard staff, to give you a behind-the-scenes look at things. So there's a lot of information and tips and a community that we've started to build within the rewards program outside of just transactions.
Speaker 1:The travel and hospitality industry, as you know, has seen some pretty major shifts with regard to customer expectations post-pandemic major shifts with regard to customer expectations post-pandemic. What trends have you noticed in cruiser preferences and how does your customer loyalty program work to address some of these?
Speaker 2:So one of the biggest shifts and it's probably not necessarily unique to the cruise industry. I would say that it's probably everywhere Consumers have higher expectations of how you communicate with them and the experience you provide. They really want a personalized or tailored experience. They don't want all the noise and they're expecting everything to be frictionless. Right. That's their expectation. They're higher than they were before, and so if you create a digital product and you put that in front of your customers, it should be a great experience for them, or you lose them right away. So you've got to gain their attention and then keep it by providing a frictionless experience, and I think cruise lines have done a great job doing that. They've recognized that that behavior is there now, and so we've really leaned into personalization and trying to make sure that we know who our customers are. To do that, we needed more data, and this rewards program has helped us get there.
Speaker 1:Personalization is a topic that's very significant to those in customer loyalty, especially the members of Loyalty360. It's a topic we discuss quite often. When you look at personalization, how does Cruisescom use the insight and the technology they have to offer more personalized and relevant rewards and experiences to your customers?
Speaker 2:So great question. I'll give you a practical example of how we do that. So we introduced a feature called a watch list. So as you're browsing, you're shopping for different cruise options on our website, you're able to add a cruise to your watch list and then we notify you when that cruise goes on sale. So it's really a way to say, like, okay, I really love this shirt or this outfit, but I don't want to pay, you know, a hundred dollars for it. So when it goes on sale, I'll buy it.
Speaker 2:Well, we're now notifying you proactively to say, okay, this cruise now has gone on sale or there's an extra amenity, now is the time to book it. So we are providing that expert advice that we typically do offline now as part of the overall digital experience, and what it has allowed us to do is that customer has raised their hand and said this is the product I'm interested in. So instead of building some sophisticated rules engine, we've literally just asked the customer what cruiser are you interested in? And then sometimes we'll even create incentives for them based on what they're interested in. So I think that's personalization at its finest, and it's also very simple. It's not something that requires a lot of sophistication.
Speaker 1:There are also going to be some challenges with regard to leveraging technology and being able to offer personalized experiences. So, when you look at the kind of the challenge, how do you balance the customer demand for personalized experiences with the need to scale your program but also leverage different technologies?
Speaker 2:So I think that, overall, customers want personalization, but they want everything to be flexible. So flexibility is key and instead of it just being simply a rigid loyalty program, that's points-based right. You earn points after you travel and then you're able to use those points for a discount later on. There's two things that we focused on when we approached this. One was flexibility and what they can redeem points for, so not only for discounts, but also for additional amenities, on-board credit, a cash back rebate. We even have merchandise. You can go in and purchase pretty much anything. You can buy furniture for your home if you wanted to, with the points that you earn by booking with us. So we have put in a ton of rewards. We're now adding also Uber credits, so you can just redeem your points for an Uber ride if you wanted to. We know that the key here is people are not going to take a cruise so often, and so how do we build in this flexibility to say you can use your points for almost anything?
Speaker 2:So, you earn them with us, but you have that flexibility. And then, two, I would just say that With us, when you earn points, you can use them towards any cruise line. You're earning them on any cruise line, or as you go direct to the cruise line, you only are able to earn or be recognized for the transactions you make with that one cruise line.
Speaker 1:As you know, the travel space is very competitive, especially in this era of a little bit of economic uncertainty. A little bit of economic uncertainty Airlines, hotels and cruise lines all vying for travel loyalty and a share of that fixed quote-unquote pie. How do you see your customer loyalty program competing and coexisting with other travel reward programs?
Speaker 2:So fantastic question. I am a loyal customer of the airlines and the hoteliers myself, so I would say that with our program, if you're going to take I'm going to use an example if you're going to take a cruise throughout the Greek Isles, it's a Europe cruise you have to fly there right to get to your departure port and fly home. A lot of people fly in the day before because they don't want to miss the boat, if you will, so they stay at a hotel, and so to me, I feel like those loyalty programs can coexist and you can still earn points for the hotel stay prior to your cruise or for the flight that you're going to take to get to your cruise, and it doesn't take away from. I don't think people are choosing whether they take a flight or a cruise. I think it additive. So that's one part, and then I mentioned working cooperatively with the cruise lines. You earn in both sides. You earn towards your loyalty status with the cruise line and with us, um, and so for me I think that's a win-win um.
Speaker 1:Best example yeah, at the 2024 Loyalty Expo, partnerships were a significant topic. Brands are facing the challenges of creating a more personalized and relevant partnership for their customers and their partners' customers. But aligning that between one or more brands can create some challenges, making sure that both are on brand mission, that customers see value in the partnership. This process is taking longer as these partnerships, as you know, need customers see value in the partnership. This process is taking longer as these partnerships, as you know, need to be carefully assessed and developed. How is your brand addressing the challenge or the opportunity regarding partnerships?
Speaker 2:I think the future is definitely partnerships through loyalty programs. So I can understand why that's a challenge and a topic of discussion. We are still, as I mentioned, in the infancy, but we know that that is the future. We recognize it. So we're leaning into trying to identify partners where they may have a loyalty program and they earn points that are outside of travel and it's unrelated to travel, but they can use those points for a vacation, and I think that that's going to be our key to success.
Speaker 2:We don't want to compete with hotels or other travel entities for vacation dollars. We want to be able to be the partner of choice for other industries and for their customers to redeem points for a cruise vacation. Other industries and for their customers to redeem points for a cruise vacation. So we're actually taking that route. I know traditionally it's like you can use Chase Points and you can transfer them to another partner, like a Marriott, and you sometimes can get a bonus for that. We're not heading down that path. We're actually looking outside of the travel space to find partnerships. The biggest challenge I would say is this is an alternate currency, as you've mentioned before, and so it's that conversion and making sure that it does work financially for both parties that are involved or for all parties involved.
Speaker 1:Looking ahead, what innovations or additions do you see for Cruisescom to their loyalty program, to your loyalty program. Are there plans to roll out new earning opportunities, partnerships or maybe even technology integrations?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing is listening to customers, taking their feedback and then designing based on what they want, not what we think is best. I think we all tend to do that with everything. It's like we think we know where we have a lot of data that can help us directionally, but ultimately you've got to listen to the customer and what they're telling you. So we have added a lot of feedback loops within the rewards program to get regular feedback from customers to find out what they want. So that's one. Two is we are exploring reducing the time it takes for customers to find out what they want. So that's one. Two is we are exploring reducing the time it takes for customers to transact with us and we have put specific measures against that to know whether that's actually increasing loyalty, because we've enhanced the experience and made it much easier for customers to do business with us. We'll still look at partnerships but because it's still new, we're trying to continue to evolve and build on what we've created so far.
Speaker 1:When you look at your program, what are two or three things you're most proud of?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I feel like it's a cruise industry first, or I should say not necessarily cruise industry first I can be that bold but it definitely is, on the OTA side, the first ever points-based loyalty program in the cruise space. So I know there's other aggregators or OTAs that have loyalty programs but they don't support cruise necessarily. This is a cruise only loyalty program and we've really leaned into that. We know who our customer is and we want to reward them for their choice to do business with us.
Speaker 1:And now it's time for our wonderful quick fire round. We'd like to keep these to a one word or a short phrase response. What word or short phrase do you use to inspire others?
Speaker 2:Chase progress, not perfection.
Speaker 1:What is your least favorite word that others use?
Speaker 2:Overcomplicate.
Speaker 1:What excites you at work Getting to travel and what do you find tiresome at work or at home?
Speaker 2:Meetings.
Speaker 1:Is there a book that you've read or you like to read that you also recommend to colleagues due to its relevance?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm reading one now Leader's Leap by Steve Dennis.
Speaker 1:What profession other than the one that you're currently in would you maybe like to try?
Speaker 2:Running my own company.
Speaker 1:What do you enjoy doing that you often don't get the time to do?
Speaker 2:Go to the gym or go for a run.
Speaker 1:And who inspired you to become the person you are today.
Speaker 2:One of my bosses. She is an inspiring leader for many reasons, but she really taught me to believe in myself because others saw something that I wasn't seeing.
Speaker 1:And last question how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:Well, number one is a great mom, and then I would say probably somebody who's got great one-liners and moves with boldness.
Speaker 1:Rosemary, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with the state. It was great to hear about the program, very interesting partnership approach and how you're working symbiotically with your brand partners. We look forward to learning more from cruisescom through the remainder of 2025. We truly appreciate it and the passion you have for the program and your customer definitely resonated. So that was great to hear. So thank you very much and continue your success.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mark, appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Also want to thank everyone else for taking the time to listen today. Be sure to check back every Thursday for additional episodes of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty Brand Stories Edition, and please subscribe to our YouTube channel and listen to our podcast on your preferred podcast provider. Until next Thursday, have a wonderful day.