Is it a cruise? Or a luxurious lodge at sea?: Journey Weekly

Andrea Zelinski

Celeb Cruises is not glad with being only a cruise line. Based on its newest advert marketing campaign, it is a resort.

The language is the most recent instance of pivots from cruise corporations to reinvent themselves as a special sort of journey than a typical cruise.

The brand new advert airing on tv, digital and social media platforms to drum up demand forward of Wave season positions Celeb as a “luxurious resort at sea” with company globetrotting the planet on the Celeb Past whereas meditating, paddle boarding and having fun with specialty cocktails.   

“It is a luxurious lodge,” mentioned Michael Scheiner, chief advertising and marketing officer for Celeb. “It is Michelin-quality eating, it is a luxurious spa retreat, and on the similar time you are discovering the cultures and histories of a number of nations in a single voyage. Celeb Cruises goes past being one other conventional cruise line.”

A “relaxed luxurious resort at sea” is how the 30-second model of the advert ends. However the longer model that’s more likely to be considered on-line kicks off by figuring out Celeb as a resort as two folks swim within the Past’s Retreat-area pool and a crew member delivers a tray of tropical-colored combined drinks as daring copy proclaims: “Journey wonderFULL on a relaxed luxurious resort at sea with the world at your service.”  

The brand new messaging signifies to Morgan Graybill, proprietor of Morning Star Luxurious Journey in Greenville, S.C., that Celeb is attempting to go after luxurious resort shoppers. The query is whether or not that may work.

“The luxurious resort clientele has a unfavourable connotation with cruising,” she mentioned, including they wish to keep away from a few of cruising’s conventional associations, like crowds, casinos and buffets. Some folks have solely dug their heels in additional on that perspective because the pandemic, she mentioned, particularly in avoidance of crowds — which is prompting cruise strains to rebrand themselves to make cruising fashionable once more.

Celeb’s transfer additionally seeks to maintain the model aggressive as new luxurious merchandise enter the cruise market, together with a number of conventional lodge corporations that are actually constructing yacht-like merchandise – and are pointedly staying away from the time period “cruising.”

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht firm started crusing its first ship in October. In the meantime, 4 Seasons is establishing a 190-passenger ship beneath the 4 Seasons Yachts model, and Aman is constructing a 100-passenger vessel in a three way partnership with cruise Saudi referred to as Venture Sama.   

In recent times, Torstein Hagen, chairman of Viking, has additionally made some extent to distance the model from the connotations of a cruise. 

And Virgin Voyages and Azamara have prevented the phrase “cruises” from their identify, whereas strains like Cunard Line and Seabourn use the time period solely sparingly on their web sites.