Face-to-Face: Sean Treacy
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This week, Travel Daily Asia goes Face-to-Face with Sean Treacy, the recenty-appointed managing director for Singapore & Southeast Asia with Royal Caribbean Cruises…
Q) Which Southeast Asian cruises (in terms of duration and destination) are currently the most popular with Royal Caribbean’s customers?
Among Asian guests, based on their vacation patterns, they tend to book the shorter cruises of three to five nights that visit Malaysian and Thai destinations with more attractions nearer to the port, especially Penang and Phuket.
As for guests outside of Asia from, e.g. Europe and America, they usually prefer long cruises of seven nights and above, such as our seven-night ‘Spice of Southeast Asia’ cruise with three Malaysian ports-of-call and an overnight in Phuket which they find highly attractive because it is port-intensive.
Q) Are you seeing a rise in the number of Asian passengers on your Southeast Asian cruises? And if so, what are your biggest source markets?
We are experiencing double digit growth year-on-year for Asian guests on our Southeast Asian cruises and Singapore, India and Indonesia are our biggest source markets, with Malaysia as an up-and-coming one.
Q) You recently signed an agreement with STB and Changi Airport to promote the Singapore fly-cruise sector. Which markets will you be specifically targeting, and what impact do you think this deal will have?
We will focus more on building up the fly-cruise markets nearer to Singapore, such as Asia and Australia. The tripartite agreement is a significant boost for the growth plans for our Singapore homeported cruises, which will not only help grow our source markets in Asia and beyond, Southeast Asia’s ports in for example Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam will also stand to benefit from the larger number of foreign visitors on Royal Caribbean’s sailings in the upcoming years. In turn, we believe that this will help to promote the region as a cruise destination as a whole.
Q) Which destinations in Southeast Asia do you think hold the strongest potential for the cruise sector?
Those with adequate places of attraction and road infrastructure near the port such as Singapore, Penang and Phuket, as well as Malacca, when the new cruise terminal is completed.
Q) Are there any plans to deploy more of your new Quantum-class ships in Southeast Asia in the near future?
Following the strong market response to Quantum of the Seas’ Singapore sailings in June, the next Quantum Class ship Ovation of the Seas will be here in June 2016 for a three-night cruise to Kuala Lumpur (Port Klang) and a 12-night one to Tianjin with calls at Ho Chi Minh City (Phu My), Hong Kong, Xiamen and Seoul (Incheon), to bring more of the revolutionary Quantum Class experience to cruisers in the region.
Q) What are your projections for the growth of Southeast Asian cruise traffic in the coming years?
We expect the market to continue to grow over the next few years, as driven by product novelty, rising affluence as well as greater awareness and attraction for cruising among consumers and trade. This is boosted by longer homeporting seasons in Singapore, for instance from this October Mariner of the Seas will have its longest season ever in Singapore.
There are more ships coming into the market, larger ships and newer ships, such as our upcoming new 4,905-pax Quantum Class ship Ovation of the Seas coming to Singapore next June. For Royal Caribbean, we aim to double our guest numbers in the region over the next three to four years based on these strong growth factors.
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