Montrose Travel, a division of CTM, a $4 billion global travel powerhouse and nationally recognized Top 12 Travel Management Company, has held an enduring relationship with Royal Caribbean International. That relationship has sparked continued customer loyalty at Royal Caribbean and, as a result, Royal Caribbean honored Montrose Travel as the West Partner of the year for 2016.
This commendation pays tribute to an elite group of travel agencies within the United States and Canada that embodies passion, commitment, and innovation and go above and beyond to achieve success.
Montrose Travel and Royal Caribbean International have a decades-long relationship. In 2012, Montrose named Royal Caribbean its Supplier Partner of the Year in 2012, the same year Montrose was honored as Royal Caribbean’s West Partner of the Year for the first time.
Chris Martin, director, loyalty and leisure marketing, Montrose Travel, told Loyalty360 that the recognition is a distinct honor.
“We work with a vast array of travel suppliers – cruise lines, vacation wholesalers, hotels, car rental companies, and airlines – but it’s always an honor when we’re recognized by such a respected brand,” Martin explained. “At the end of the day, it’s a testament to how well we work together. Royal Caribbean is truly one of our most proactive travel partners and was one of the very first to jump onboard with our Travel Loyalty marketing plans. It has been aggressively supportive of the ways we’ve been changing our marketing toward cruisers and those new to cruise, and the fact its brand has so much to offer for all types of travelers makes for a degree of built-in engagement. People have come to understand that a cruise in today’s world is not what it used to be. You’re literally on a floating city and Royal Caribbean is exceptional at delivering this experience.”
Montrose Travel has certainly impacted customer loyalty at Royal Caribbean.
“The hallmark of a great relationship is the mutual-benefit factor,” Martin added. “Here it manifests as helping Royal Caribbean reach out to tens of millions of cardholders, while it enables us to deliver true value to cardholders in the Loyalty Rewards programs we serve. Without question, there are many cardholders already familiar with the Royal Caribbean brand. Giving them the flexibility of booking their cruise – whether with a points redemption, as a split tender transaction, or even as an outright purchase transaction with a points-earning component − extends that pre-existing brand loyalty to the Loyalty Rewards program. Besides the obvious advantage of being able to earn and use points toward the cruise transaction, we feel there shouldn’t be any distinction between travel e-commerce companies and travel rewards within the context of a Loyalty program. Everything else should be at parity or better. Royal Caribbean gets this where others are still getting their arms around the concept.”