Ambassador Cruise Line has shared plans to launch a new trade portal designed to be a “one-stop shop” for agents

The Ambassador Cruise Line Trade Portal will combine cruise searching, booking management, live campaigns, trade incentives, training, marketing assets, ship visit requests and business support in one place.

On the line’s current system, most agencies have just one login for the whole branch while many homeworkers are not registered at all, Ambassador’s deputy head of trade, Karen Cameron, told Cruise Trade News.

But under the new system, each agent will have individual access to the platform which will make it easier for each agent to work with the line as well as be recognised and rewarded for their efforts, Cameron added.

Ambassador has worked with ROL Cruise to test the platform at each development stage to ensure it fits the needs of the trade.

The portal will be unveiled in mid-September but the line will begin onboarding agents in the coming weeks so they are registered by the time it goes live.

“Agents are the backbone of everything we do at Ambassador so we want to ensure it’s as easy as possible for them to work with us,” said Cameron.

“We have invested heavily in developing this system as we want to offer a really tailored service for every agent that uses it.

“It was really important to us to make sure we got feedback from actual agents as they are the experts in their fields and they know what they want from a platform and the feedback from the agents who have used it already has been phenomenal.”

Nicola Harper, head of distribution, said: “Our valued trade partners continue to be a vital part of our success at Ambassador, so whenever we invest in technology it has to make a genuine difference to the way they work every day.

“Rather than simply updating our existing trade portal, we took a step back at the beginning of the year and looked at the whole journey from an agent’s perspective so that we could create something new that would fully service our partners’ needs.

“We wanted to create a genuine one-stop shop where agents could search for cruises, make and manage bookings, access campaigns, request ship visits, download marketing assets and find the information they need, all without moving between different systems.”

Billy Rusbridge, senior cruise consultant at ROL Cruises, added: “The introduction of Ambassador’s new trade portal has been a breath of fresh air.

“It is one of the most user-friendly systems I have come across, which not only helps the agent, but also helps with the flow of communication with customers.”