What incentivises you to succeed at your job? For me, there’s no motivator more powerful than the thought of someone having a positive reaction to something I’ve written or edited (I’ll never forget the sheer excitement I felt when the person sat next to me on an early-morning flight to Lisbon began reading one of my features in easyJet’s in-flight magazine).

For travel agents, however, the carrot on the end of the stick is slightly juicier, where reaching sales targets could mean winning everything from vouchers to a free holiday. And if you were one of the lucky agents to win tickets to see Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium earlier this year, courtesy of Unforgettable Croatia, we’d love to hear from you!

Figuring out how best to incentivise the trade is something cruise lines are constantly grappling with. And so, in what was an epic feat of diary juggling, Cruise Trade News decided to bring together five senior industry experts from both sides of the table to debate the merits of agent reward schemes. What became clear during our discussion was that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

Turn to page 43 for our in-depth write-up on the roundtable interview, where you can also scan a QR code to watch the conversation in full on cruisetradenews.com.

Elsewhere, on page 36, we share the key findings from the 2024 Cruise Summit, hosted by Cruise Trade News at the News UK offices in June, while on page 64, we share 10 irresistible reasons to send your clients on an island-hopping cruise around the South Pacific.

Happy reading!