From EyeforTravel.com Correspondent in London<br><br>As Costa Cruises considers decreasing its costs and increasing net
Published: 13 Nov 2005
From EyeforTravel.com Correspondent in London
As Costa Cruises considers decreasing its costs and increasing net revenue, the main objective of the company is to increase the percentage of the electronic channels towards the offline channel, accord
"We will succeed in decreasing our costs and increasing our net revenue only if we adopt this strategy. It is our plan to take up this opportunity exploiting all electronic channels," says Mancini. "In the E-Business and E-Distribution areas Costa Crociere progressed further this year. We accomplished several projects on line in order to decrease our products distribution costs and in order to boost sales."
The company has taken two major initiatives in the distribution area this year:
B2C website: it includes an online booking engine. End users can directly purchase Costa cruises by credit card; B2B website: specific for travel agencies. It is possible to book online and to get all information regarding Costa cruises (Work Flow management).
[As per the information available for B2C websites initiatives, the company has 17 online versions (customised per country, in 10 different languages); Interactive information about Costa products and booking details; Additional sale facilities (shore excursions and special services online reservation for already booked customers); After user registration, based on a CRM platform, our website allows us to recognize customer typology (potential - prospect - guest - loyalty); Depending on user category, our website adapts its content with different information and shows various promotional offers].
`Web Affiliation Programme': Costa Crociere developed an Internet system that allows selected partners to include Costa catalogue/booking engine in their internal reservation system or website (B2B/B2C). This programme is totally customizable by T.A. and target group as T.A. network, and it is based on Microsoft Webservices.
On the strength of the programme, he said, "This results in realtime access to Costa database, tracking features and analysis, macro & micro distribution, present in generic tourism distribution providers, part of partner's/network's reservation system (no need of training)."
During his presentation in the session ` Understand the impact of increased direct connectivity and standardisation on your business', on e-channels Mancini said, "There is cost savings per booking for both T.O.s and T.A.s, there are commission savings (direct distribution), time savings, sales increase and also purchase and consumer (B2B, B2C) behaviour analysis."
The strategy, according to Mancini, is to have different e-channel strategies for different markets. GDS is only a booking engine, while B2B is a work-flow and document management system between Costa and T.A.s
Citing examples, Mancini said, "In Italy: our B2B was launched but not GDSs. In Germany: Amadeus was launched but not our B2B. In U.S., U.K. and Scandinavia: our new B2C website was launched to sell directly."
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