On The Deck: Gerard Tempest

It’s been all change at Carnival UK recently and no one would blame you for not keeping up with what’s been happening. Just to recap: a few months ago the news broke that P&O managing director Carol Marlow and Cunard president Peter Shanks would both be leaving the company – the announcement was shortly followed with news that sales & customer services director Giles Hawke was on his way out too. The reason behind the departures has been a corporate reshuffle, dealt by UK CEO David Dingle. The entire board level of Carnival UK has changed and now the direction of P&O and Cunard is being viewed by executives who will come with fresh ideas and new ways to take the brands forward. Full steam ahead then? But where do all of these changes leave a disenfranchised trade? We spoke to Gerard Tempest, Carnival UK’s chief marketing officer to find out how he plans to take the company forward and what he has in store for UK travel agents.

How have you found the transition from your previous role, which was in hotels?
I did 20 years in hotels, the last seven of which were with Premier Inn. It’s a lot the same and a lot different! The similarities are that we have hotels now much the same as I did in my previous life. The big difference is that when we built hotels before, they generally didn’t move. Now we can move them around the planet. We’re still faced with the same problems – like perishable inventory – and you still have to maintain a great brand, great customer service and spatial planning work still needs to be done. We have the opportunity to be more flexible in many ways than hotels but customers have an ever increasing expectation of what they want from their holiday pound.

What have you been up to over the last eight months?
I’m a firm believer that I have two ears and one mouth for a reason. I’ve spent a lot of time on our ships, talking to customers, our team onboard and onshore and a lot of time with our key business partners, learning about their businesses too. I’ve been getting my head around the industry and the big drivers of demand. Part of the process is looking at competition and I will be spending a week onboard a Celebrity Cruise ship in September. I’ve also been making full use of the huge knowledge bank that’s within the Carnival team.

Your arrival has been part of a Carnival UK reshuffle. Could you briefly explain the new structure?
In terms of the Carnival global structure we have 10 brands but there are five main operating companies. One of those is Carnival UK, which has P&O Cruises and Cunard within it. We now have an executive team that runs Carnival UK. It’s headed by David Dingle, who’s my boss; David Noyes, EVP of operations; Ed Jones our CFO; John Wood, our CIO and me. Then I have a marketing director for P&O Cruises called Chris Edgington and a marketing director for Cunard Angus Struthers; an insight director for Carnival UK called Jeremy Tait; a commercial director for both brands called Nigel Esdale; an international development director for Cunard David Rousham; and a head of sales called Chris Truscott.

A lot of changes then. What were the reasons for that change?
I think we had a big, broad board previously and there was a need to make that a smaller, tighter board which is what David Dingle’s done. He’s recruited outside cruise to complement what we’ve got, which is a very rich heritage. It’s a really good way to go.

How has your research gone into studying the market?
There was a very large piece of work on Cunard that was completed just before I came onboard, which looked at the attitudes of US and UK consumers. So I had a large volume of work to start and we’re now just finishing replicating that for P&O. We are now looking at what segments of the market we’re going to target each brand, which we’ve just got underway now.

And this will all be looking forward to the next big P&O launch in 2015?
Yes absolutely, we’re busy building that in Genoa right now. It’ll be delivered at the end of February 2015 and be the biggest cruise ship ever designed specifically for the UK market. A lot of the work we’re doing right now on segmentation is going to help us with that ship albeit a lot of the decisions
around the physical fabric have already been made because of the long lead time.

You mentioned earlier your engagement with the trade. How do you think that’s gone?
I think it’s gone well. The way the business is now starting to engage with the trade has been very well received. We’ve launched a programme called ‘Agent Matters’ which I think some of the trade may have looked at and gone ‘We’ve not mattered for the last few years why would we matter now?’ To which our response has been that we completely understand the scepticism but we are absolutely dedicated to that channel and I want to drive more volume through it. It clearly has to be at an acceptable cost of sale but some of the activity we’ve put into the trade has gone down well and I think we’re starting to see some early signs of green shoots with our key trade partners.

It’s interesting that you’ve accepted that certain relationships could be better and potentially more fruitful in the future.
I’m fairly straightforward and when I listen to customers and trade partners, and their views of us, it makes me think that maybe we have – unconsciously or consciously – ended up not having the relationship with the trade we should have. So we’re putting things in place to make that better. There may be some scepticism in the market place now, which I get, but let’s look at that in a year’s time and tell me what you think then. I can tell you all sort of things but until you see what we do you will remain unconvinced.

So you should be judged on the year going forward?
I wouldn’t even say you had to wait a year. Within the next weeks and months we will be engaging with them more and more because they are as expert within the sector as we are. We’re very fortunate because of our brand heritage but that doesn’t mean we know everything, and through our partners we improve our business by involving them much more so than perhaps we’ve done in the past.

What do you hope to achieve in the next 12 months?
1. Better relationships with our travel agent partners
2. Make our brand stronger
3. Deliver a better experience for our customers
4. Improve the commercial performance of the business.