Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Royal Caribbean International
Celebrity Cruises
Azamara Cruises
October 9, 2007
Dear Travel Partner,
We are writing to provide you with important information regarding the new manner in which we will be dealing with certain travel-related business practices.
Royal Caribbean International®, Celebrity Cruises® and Azamara CruisesSM have begun terminating our business relationships with certain travel-related companies that we have concluded are in the "card-mill"
business (selling ordinary consumers access to benefits designed for actual travel agents). We have a fundamental concern with the business practices of these companies.
We are taking this action in an effort to prevent a growing and troubling trend within the travel industry. As you are likely aware, these "card mill" companies offer normal consumers the ability to become a "travel
agent" or "travel agency" or receive "travel agent credentials" with little or no professional training or certification. These normal consumers are also often told they will receive discounted travel pricing and/or other benefits from travel suppliers, such as our brands, which are specifically intended for legitimate, professional travel agents.
These activities have many negative effects:
· They can lead to negative consumer experiences with these untrained agents, undermining the integrity and business reputations of accredited and certified travel agents.
· They can devalue the knowledge, experience and expertise that legitimate, professional travel agents provide their clients every day.
· They can substantially increase the costs of our operations by causing us to provide costly and valuable benefits to a set of persons or entities for which those benefits were not intended.
· They can create an environment in which the traditional and full set of services we expect a travel agency to provide to consumers are, in fact, not provided, despite the payment of a full commission in connection with a booking.
· They can mislead normal consumers with unrealistic expectations of "travel-agent-only benefits," when, in fact, they are not travel agents.
We encourage legitimate, independent agents to become affiliated with an accredited host agency or to register on our travel agent website, CruisingPower.com.
Our efforts in this area will be ongoing, as we continue to evaluate the acceptability of the business practices of various companies and their associates. We remain dedicated to true travel professionals and will continue to provide them with the exceptional service they have come to know from our brands.
As always, we thank you for your ongoing support.
Sincerely,
Lisa Bauer
Senior Vice President, Sales
Royal Caribbean International®
Dondra Ritzenthaler
Senior Vice President, Sales
Celebrity Cruises® and Azamara CruisesSM
