Interview: Richard Twynam on Azamara's new sales strategy

Richard Twynam is a man who likes experiences and the stories they let him tell. And having been invited exclusively to see him in Liverpool, where I joined guests on the Azamara Journey to attend the first UK AzAmazing Evening, he’s in the mood for spining a yarn.

He is Azamara Club Cruises’ first managing director in the UK and Ireland after he was appointed to the position in December last year. With the role came a new 10-strong team, which he recruited and replaces a single UK-based sales rep who was left to cover the country.

He says: “We’ve now got 11 people that get out of bed every day thinking about Azamara cruises.”

The strategy already appears to be paying off: 2014 will be the first year that the cruise line breaks the 10,000 mark for the number of UK passengers it carries, while more than 90% of the business has been generated by the trade.

And while more staff clearly helps, Twynam believes the growth has been driven by a strategy drawing on the changing nature of what people expect from a break.

“The more we can tell the story about what we do, the more we can move the focus from prices”

He has taken onboard the Boston Consulting Group’s Luxe Redux report, which was released in 2012 and claimed that 55% of all purchases in the luxury market are on experiences.

He has been further influenced by James Wallman’s book Stuffocation, which argues people are beginning to value experiences over “stuff”.

These factors have increasingly led Twynam to focus on the experiences offered by Azamara, which in turn gives him an opportunity to start telling stories and focus his sales strategy.

He says: “If we as a brand can talk about experiences like AzAmazing Evenings or Insider Access, then you don’t need to talk about the price.

“The more we can tell the story about what we do, where we go, talk about Azamara holidays… the more we can move the focus from prices.”

Gastronomic venture

With Nights and Cool Places also proving popular, Twynam is preparing to launch another new experience concept: Cruise Global, Eat Local.

Scheduled for November, the programme focuses on finding the best local food in ports of call, which the ship’s crew would choose, and then taking cruisers there. Twynam says: “It is not about Michelin-star dining - it is about

the best local food. If it’s [being served] from a hole in the wall in the back of Bangkok, that’s what it’ll be.”

He believes that discussing experiences draws people away from focusing on price, but also helps drive early bookings, with 50% of Azamara’s customers booking more than six months before departure. He adds: “That’s

fundamentally different from the rest of the cruise market. Clia members have 40% [of bookings made] within three months of departure.

“A lot of those [Azamara] itineraries are bucket-list experiences. For instance, with the Monaco Grand Prix, you don’t book that with a month to go - you want to be looking forward to it for a year or so.”

Twynam also argues that a focus on such experiences when selling Azamara means customers tend to be pleasantly surprised by the quality of other aspects of their cruise - meaning a repeat booking rate of more than 50%.

He says: “What customers find is when they come onboard, they love the ambience, the staff and the food quality is amazing, and they come back. For that reason, we undersell that.”

“We’re excited about Abercrombie & Kent for obvious reasons - their philosophy as a business is to give individual experiences”

Twynam has also been keen to work with luxury tour operators and while he announced in February that he was negotiating with Kuoni and up to two other operators about future partnerships, completing the deals has taken longer than expected.

The Kuoni deal has long been signed and sealed, but negotiations with Abercrombie & Kent and Cox & Kings have both been delayed after he landed a deal with the Acromas Group, which has seen cruises go on sale in July via its brands Saga Holidays and Titan.

And now that is done, he remains confident about signing up more luxury operators to feature the product because of similar strategies on the marketing front.

Twynam says: “We’re excited about Abercrombie & Kent for obvious reasons - their philosophy as a business is to give individual experiences. If you look at what Kuoni has done to launch our product, they’ve done a great job.

“What those tour operators can do is ‘story tell’ the experience. Our traditional cruiser partners do an amazing job for us, but there are certain tour operators that can ‘story tell’ [the itinerary] - for instance, sailing up the river into Ho Chi Minh City.”