Tui recently made a fresh play for third-party agents’ support with a new “give us a go” trade message – so has Marella benefited from its parent operator’s endeavours?

Managing director Chris Hackney is unequivocal; this year has been the best in the line’s 28-year history, one in which it carried more than 350,000 passengers and worked with nearly 200 new agents.

Things are going so well, in fact, that Marella felt confident enough to increase its Atol in September by around 15% from 355,521 authorisations to 409,852 – putting it among the top 10 Atol holders.

New-to-cruise passenger numbers are up, new destinations are coming to market and customer satisfaction scores are the highest they’ve ever been. And crucially, for Hackney, more and more third-party agents are engaging with the line.

Agent incentives 

In May, Marella launched its first-ever “trade-wide” booking incentive, offering agents the chance to win a place on a Caribbean sailing in 2025. To enter, agents must log a Marella package booking before 31 December. The more they book, the greater their chance of winning a spot.

As TTG went to press, nearly 2,300 agents had entered the “Make it on Marella” incentive, which Hackney insists had helped drive third-party agent sales. “Around 1,300 travel agents sold a Marella Cruises sailing last year – that figure included 199 new agents for us,” he reveals.

In addition, Hackney says the line’s four-person trade sales team has trained nearly 13,000 travel agents. Despite this, the line has no plans to recruit more trade-facing staff to support its training programme.

However, Hackney stresses the line constantly reviews its sales team structure.

“We’ve stepped things up and we’ve seen the fruits of that,” he explains. “The biggest challenge for the sector is getting customers to experience a cruise for the first time. We’re working with more agents than ever before and seen new-to-cruise customer numbers grow. Now we’re seeing them come back two, three and four times.”

Hackney says Marella’s passenger repeat rate currently stands at 40%. “There’s a really high retention rate. We know the value we offer with the all-inclusive product, the destinations and the customer experience.”

Adult-only expansion 

Marella is fast approaching a milestone moment. In 2026, the line will have been operating for 30 years. The 2026 summer season will see Marella Discovery become its second adult-only vessel.

Hackney says the decision to expand its adult-only fleet was driven by “growing” customer demand for adult-only holidays on Marella Explorer 2. “It’s where we’re seeing demand,” he explains. “We’ve always had one adult-only ship, and sometimes we’ve had two, but we’ve never had two for the summer season.”

The 1,830-passenger Marella Discovery will operate three itineraries from Limassol visiting Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. “Three-quarters of customers said adult-only ships were important to them when making a booking,” Hackney adds.

When asked from which Tui product strands Marella tends to attract customers, Hackney says: “We see a correlation between Tui Blue and Sensatori customers and those who go on a cruise holiday. They drive customers to our product.”

With this kind of insight, the five-ship line appears to be ready to become a permanent fixture in independent agents’ thinking.