Scenic Continues to Grow and Evolve

 This article originally appeared the April issue of AGENTatHOME magazine. Subscribe here to receive your free copy each month.

A little over four months ago, Ken Muskat became managing director of Scenic Group USA, overseeing sister brands Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours and Emerald Cruises.

The opportunity brought with it a bit of a learning curve for Muskat, since his extensive prior experience was with contemporary ship companies, including MSC Cruises (USA), Royal Caribbean International and a Shanghai, China-based cruise line. Muskat now oversees sales, marketing, finance, revenue management and contact centers for river cruise and small yacht operations in the U.S., Mexico and Central and South America.

He told AGENTatHOME that one of the biggest surprises upon joining Scenic was how the two cruise brands remain somewhat of a “best-kept secret” among travel advisors, even as they grow and expand their fleets.

“A lot of the travel advisor distribution doesn’t know the breadth and scope of the company – the fact that we have 22 river ships and four ocean yachts, and the fact that we’re two brands offering river, ocean and expedition,” he said. “That portfolio is very unique, and I think the awareness that we have all of that is not out there to where it needs to be.”

The variety of ships, experiences and destinations can help advisors keep customers loyal by continually offering them something new.

“That kind of portfolio can really lead to great things for the trade and the consumer,” Muskat said. “Obviously, for the trade, that gives them a much greater portfolio to fit their clients into because it also allows for clients to start with us on river, then do expedition or ocean or different destinations.”

Scenic leadership is committed to the travel advisor market, he said. “The commitment from the top down is to do everything we need to do to embrace the trade, work with the trade, be easy to do business with, and know the trade are going to be the ones that help us grow our brand awareness and demand,” Muskat said. “I knew that going in, but I don’t think I realized even to what extent, until I started and saw how passionate the owners are about the commitment to the trade.”

One key effort to help agents: the Advance Pay Program, now extended through 2023, which pays commissions within 21 days of final payment.

“The reason it was extended was because the agents that signed up for that program asked us to extend it,” Muskat said. “We’re getting people to pay in full, and when they’re paid in full, they’re less likely to cancel.”

Scenic and Emerald also offer travel advisor rates, co-op marketing assistance, webinars, hosted fams, ad-hoc promotions for the trade and bonus commission opportunities.

It’s also important for travel advisors to understand the commitment to customer service.

“Our team, especially on board, understands that these guests we’re working with are oftentimes ultra-luxury, bucket list kind of experienced guests, and so the ability, the desire and the empowerment to go above and beyond to deliver for these people is great. You can do that when you work for a smaller company, especially with smaller ships that only hold 100 or 200-plus people,” Muskat said.

“That ability for the crew to be empowered to go above and beyond is really something that I’ve learned is very different from anything I’ve worked on with my background, because you don’t often have that empowerment with a ship that holds 6,000 people.”

Muskat’s main goal is to share that information and engage with travel agents.

“The No. 1 main goal is to get travel advisors to reach out and engage with us,” he said. “The more that they learn about the brands, experience the brands firsthand, engage with our team, and sign up for our agent newsletter, we know that they’re going to be incredibly satisfied learning about how unique our product is.

They’ll feel comfortable that their clients will come back with extremely high guest satisfaction and want to repeat, not only with that travel advisor, but want to repeat with us.”

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