TL;DR
- Explora Journeys, the ultra-luxury cruise line within the MSC Group, will start paying travel advisors commission on the shore excursions booked for their clients.
- No other ultra-luxury line has offered this before … a genuine new revenue stream on work agents were already helping with.
- Explora’s Destination Experiences are its curated days ashore … small-group, high-touch, the trips that give a sailing its character.
- More than 80% are already pre-booked, and the line wants that figure closer to 90%.
- Justin Poulsen, who heads Destination Experiences at Explora, called it “brilliant news for the travel advisor community.”
- Get familiar with the Destination Experiences catalogue now, and you’re ready rather than scrambling when the next luxury-cruise enquiry comes in.
What’s Happening at Explora Journeys
Explora Journeys, the ultra-luxury cruise line within the MSC Group, is doing something the sector hasn’t seen before. From now, it will pay travel advisors commission on the shore excursions your clients book … the days ashore, not only the cabin. Explora calls these its Destination Experiences, and they’re a real part of what makes an itinerary sing.
For agents, that turns a piece of work you were already doing into a genuine new revenue stream. You help a client picture their week, you talk through the ports, you match the right excursion to the right couple … and now that care shows up in your commission too. TTG Media, which reported the story on 31 July, describes it as an industry first for the ultra-luxury cruise sector.
A Closer Look
Destination Experiences are Explora’s curated trips ashore … smaller groups, a slower pace, days ashore that give a luxury sailing its character. They already do brisk business. Justin Poulsen, Explora’s Head of Itinerary Planning and Destination Experiences, says more than 80% are booked before guests ever step aboard, and the line would like to see that closer to 90%.
His reasoning is refreshingly candid. “Cruising is complicated, we know that, and more than 80% of our Destination Experiences are already booked in advance: we would like to get that to 90%, so we realise we need the help to move this,” Poulsen said. Bringing advisors into the commission on those bookings is how Explora hopes to close the gap. It’s a frank admission from a line that could have kept that reward to itself, and it reframes the shore day as shared ground between cruise line and advisor. He was warm about the upside, too: “This is brilliant news for the travel advisor community.”
Why This Is Handy
Good news? This sits in territory agents know well. Clients booking an ultra-luxury sailing tend to want their days ashore sorted before departure, and they’d rather that came from someone who knows their tastes than a last-minute scramble at the gangway. Being paid for that guidance simply matches the reward to the work you were doing anyway.
The early trade reaction has been warm rather than wary. Lisa McAuley, Managing Director of World Travel Holdings UK, described the move as welcome news for the advisor community, which gives you a sense of how sellers are receiving it. None of it asks you to sell harder … it rewards the careful matching you already do, day ashore by day ashore.
The Helpful Bit
The Destination Experiences catalogue is the same one you’d browse for any Explora client, so there’s nothing stopping you getting to know it now. Get familiar with it before the next enquiry comes in, and you won’t be scrambling to research options while a client waits … you’ll already be the advisor with the shore-day knowledge, ready to talk specifics from the first call. That’s a genuine head start over anyone else still catching up, and it’s a rare example of the industry paying agents for expertise they were often giving away for free.
