Celebrity Cruises Realigns Sales Organization

Celebrity Cruises has reimagined its sales structure to provide highly focused sales and support to national and key accounts, along with best-in-class marketing support to trade partners.

The announcement was made by Dondra Ritzenthaler, Senior Vice President of Sales, The Americas, and Keith Lane, Vice President of Sales, The Americas for the new-luxury cruise line.

Highlights of the new structure include:

• Aligning Inside Sales with National Accounts under the leadership of Jennifer Suarez, Associate Vice President of National Accounts;
• Providing top field accounts with key account manager support;
• And driving incremental trade business in key cities via the line’s Field Sales Managers, who will also be armed with marketing and social media tools, such as Branch Up, for the cruise line’s valued partners.

Additionally, Celebrity’s Regional Marketing Managers will be refocused on supporting key partner marketing efforts by curating various tools and resources to help grow business including leveraging Celebrity’s Marketing Assistance Program 2.0 (MAP), accessible through CruisingPower.com.

MAP features educational modules, webinars and ideation workshops all designed to share best and current practices and tools for elevating marketing efforts to drive incremental business.

The new organizational structure will go into effect beginning May 23.

Ritzenthaler said: “Our trade partners have always been the most critical part of Celebrity’s distribution model and we remain vitally important to one another’s future success as we re-emerge from the post-shutdown world. This new structure leverages our very talented sales team to uniquely support our national and key accounts with more frequent and consistent points of contact at every stage of the sales process to drive win/win results for everyone.”

Lane pointed out that: “We know that rebuilding marketing plans and programs is a critical need for so many of our trade partners. I’m especially excited about deploying our Regional Marketing Managers to literally swoop in and leverage their expertise to help our travel partners reignite their marketing and attract first to cruise and first to brand.”

The new structure follows several recent product introductions from Celebrity Cruises including FlexPay, allowing customization of how and when reservation balances are paid; and a new Future Cruise Credit redemption option that applies credits directly to outstanding balances.

Celebrity Cruises President and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said: “I’m so excited to bring our collective shared passion and commitment for serving our guests and clients even more closely together. This new structure will allow us to leverage each other’s strengths to create a unique Celebrity product and sales experience that will take all of our rebuilding efforts to new levels. And I can’t wait to see the results.”