Speaking to TTG onboard its latest ship Norwegian Encore, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings president, international, Harry Sommer, said the company “took the warning signs seriously” surrounding Cook’s poor financial health and started to prepare for the worst around March.
Sommer said sales between his line and Cook had dwindled in the past number of years and at the time of its failure accounted “for around 2% of business”.
“They weren’t a big piece of business for us. They had been a number of years back but had not given much business to us recently. It wasn’t a big shock to our system,” he said.
However, Sommer said the line had made sure to prepare itself to make sure guests travelling between Cook’s collapse and the end of the year “were well taken care of”.
“I was very pleased with the level of service we provided – I think nearly every single person who had make a booking was able to travel through one way or another and that was as a result of lots of hard work from our UK team to make that happen – we didn’t want to disrupt people’s vacations.”
Discussing how NCL was working with agents belonging to the now-defunct Freedom Travel Group, whose shutdown alongside Cook sent members battling to save their business, UK and Ireland managing director Eamonn Ferrin said the line had taken the same approach as fellow cruise brands Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd and Carnival Corporation.
Royal and Carnival announced earlier this month their strategy for helping Freedom agents retain bookings and protect their commission.
“We have exactly the same process as they did – providing they [Freedom agents] join a new consortium, and most already have, providing they have their Abta and insurance coverage in place and they have new agreements singed with us, we are very comfortable in them retaining their booking and being paid the commission as normal," said Ferrin.
“It wasn’t a huge amount of bookings so we are managing it really well.”
