Cruise360 Recap: Day Three

We’re wrapping up another great day here in beautiful Vancouver. Here’s what happened at day three of the 2017 CLIA Cruise360 conference.

Today we spent the first half of the day getting updates on several cruise lines. Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, MSC Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland American Line, Princess Cruises and Seabourn each briefed us on all the latest happenings at their respective cruise lines, including information about new ships, new itineraries and more.

We even won a fun contest with the Carnival family of brands, earning each of us a brand new bath robe from the ships of Holland America Line.

Lunch today was courtesy of our friends at Norwegian Cruise Line and was followed by General Session 2. The second of three general sessions featured a keynote address from Edie Rodriguez, President & CEO of Crystal Cruises.

Edie was followed by a hot-seat discussion featuring cruise line executives being bombarded with rapid-fire questions about their respective lines. Participants included Laurie Bohn, Director of Trade Sales & National Training, Royal Caribbean International; John Chernesky, Vice President, North America Sales, Princess Cruises & Cunard Line; Eva Jenner, Vice President, North American Sales, Holland America Line/Seabourn Cruise Line; Ken Muskat, Executive Vice President, Sales, PR & Guest Services, MSC Cruises; Adolfo Perez VP , Trade Sales and Marketing, Carnival Cruise Line; Alex Pinelo, Vice President, Key Accounts, Norwegian Cruise Line; Dondra Ritzenthaler, Senior Vice President of Sales, Celebrity Cruises; and Randall Soy, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Regent Seven Seas Cruises.

After the General Session, the Cruise360 Marketplace opened for the first of two days of networking. There are literally hundreds of suppliers on hand, including all of the cruise lines, many major hotel chains, visitor/convention bureaus from all over the world and many others. It’s a great place for us to learn more about the vast array of travel options available to our customers.

After the marketplace we stopped by the welcome reception hosted by Tourism Vancouver. The party included a wide variety of regional foods & wines plus live music.

We had the evening free and were lucky enough to have dinner with Charlie Sylvia, Vice President of Membership & Trade Relations for CLIA, the convention organizer. We also had a chance to have a one-on-one with CLIA President & CEO Cindy D’Aoust as well.

We’ve got two more jam-packed days ahead before we head home on Monday. All of our updates from Cruise360, including photo albums, Facebook live posts and much more are all posted in one place: www.premiercustomtravel.com/cruise360.

Until tomorrow, good night from British Columbia.