Carnival Cruise Line Offers Agents API for Online Booking
By the end of the year, Carnival Cruise Line will be enhancing its online trade booking procedures, which will include an API link, according to a news report from Travel Weekly.
This will enable agents to sell full fly-cruise packages with pre or post-cruise accommodation directly from their own sites. For the passenger, this will speed up the process and make their booking more accommodating to their needs.
This move follows the cruise-line's introduction of online booking for fly-cruise and cruise-only earlier this year.
UK managing director Lynn Narraway said that this procedure will enable travel agents to make the online option more cost efficient: "We have responded to their feedback with Go Carnival, now we need them to use it more but a lot of them are still ringing us," she said.
The cruise line will introduce its new vessel, Carnival Magic, to the Mediterranean for 2011, departing from Barcelona. In order to entice more first-time cruisers and families, the cruise line expected travel agents to be "creative"; to construct cruise and stay arrangements for passengers, tailored around the departures.
One of the options that the cruise line is examining is the possibility of pre or post-cruise stays which will take in the nearby top tourist attraction of PortAventura. In addition, it is looking into fast rail connections via Paris, to create easier transport links to the luxury cruise ship.
Between May and October 2011, Carnival Magic will be running seven, nine and 12-night itineraries. "With Ocean Village not there next year, agents should see Carnival Magic as a great value opportunity for Med fly-cruises," said Ms Narraway.
Travel Industry news posted by Romany on 28 July 2010
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