As part of the campaign, the line will be giving away its drinks package on all bookings, regardless of cabin grade. This will include alcoholic drinks, as well as coffees, smoothies and milkshakes.
Agents will also be able to win one of 50 places on a megafam next April, on a seven-night western Mediterranean cruise departing April 23, with all drinks included. The line has dubbed its wave campaign “the best all-inclusive at sea”, with MSC Cruises executive director UK and Ireland Giles Hawke insisting he was confident its “Allegrissimo” drinks package “beats rival offerings hands down”.
It came as Hawke admitted that the line’s free-flight promotion last year had perhaps proved “off-putting” for those who only wanted a cruise. “With this year’s promotion, it will benefit everyone, even those that don’t drink as there are still coffees and soft drinks included,” he added. The campaign will run from December 15 until February 29, when the line will draw the names of the winning agents for the fam. Meanwhile, Hawke conceded 2015 had been a “mixed year” for the line.
“Overall it has been a good year, but we took too many Gatwick flights this summer, so we had to focus more on our fly-cruise product than we would have liked. “For 2016, we’ve got flights from both London and Manchester, and so we have a much broader offering, and our cruise-only prices are much more attractive. For travel agents who want to package up cruise and stay, it makes it much more attractive to do.” Hawke also said that MSC’s new destination Cuba had proved popular, although he said the line was exploring new flight options.
“There are no direct flights from the UK – you have to fly from Madrid or Paris, and Brits like to fly direct, so we need to look at what we can do for 2017. But agents are doing their own packages with Cuba nicely.” He also conceded that the Paris terror attacks had impacted bookings, but that sales had now recovered. “In the immediate aftermath of the Paris atrocities bookings went quiet compared with what we had been experiencing.
“People were seeing this awful news, and they weren’t even thinking about booking a holiday, but now we’ve seen bookings come back to the level we were expecting.” Overall, Hawke said the line was seeing good growth for winter bookings, and that it “was a long way ahead of where it was last year”.
