Costa Crociere, the Italian unit of Carnival Corporation & plc that trades as Costa Cruises in the UK, has decided to cut out travel agents in the UK and to sell its cruises through its website and through its call centre, Travel Weekly reports
“Costa Cruises confirm that we are introducing a different business model in the UK that will see all passenger bookings made directly through our call centre and online sales platform,” the report said.
“This transition is intended to reflect the evolving state of the UK market, centralising UK operations through a single, dedicated team based in Costa head office in Genoa. All 2016 bookings made by British travel agents will be unaffected and will be managed by those agencies with the full support of the Costa Cruises customer service team," the report quoted the company as saying.
In the view of Cruise Business Online, the cruise industry has bee remarkably reluctant to follow a general trend in the travel industry to taking bookings in-house in general and in driving the use of the Internet in selling its product in particular.
