Dear Azamara Club Cruises Followers: What’s new at Azamara Club Cruises?
Larry Pimentel, CEO & President, and Edie Bornstein, VP Sales & Marketing understand the remarkable way in which social media has changed forever the way prospective and returning Azamara Club Cruises patrons are making their purchase decisions.
They understand the uncomfortable feeling you get in your “gut” when you’re reading two conflicting posts at the same time on a message board. You’re confused – in psychology, it’s called “cognitive dissonance.” Further, they realize you’re searching the web to reduce your perceived risk when making a vacation decision. You don’t want to make a mistake – what will be the possible consequences from my decision? Is there a way for me to avoid and/or to reduce them?
We recognize that all our guests are not created equal and understand that when you make your decision to cruise with Azamara you’ve made personal tradeoffs with your perceptions of our price, quality and service in order to achieve the best “value” for your vacation experience.
In order to manage the overwhelming number of opinions that that float freely on travel message boards and other outlets as “facts,” they made the decision to add a “Chief Blogging Officer” to their marketing line-up. Let me introduce myself: my name is Bill Leiber and I am honored to have been chosen as Azamara Club Cruises first Chief Blogging Officer.
My mission is to replace cyberspace misinformation and rhetoric with facts and to provide you with some straight-talk about Azamara Club Cruises’ operating philosophy that hopefully will increase your certainty of a totally satisfying vacation experience as the outcome of your purchase decision. Certainly everyone is entitled to express their own opinions, but not to express them as facts.
My primary method for evaluating and responding to these comments is whether or not they are based on “fact” or “inferential knowledge.” Factual knowledge – you observe and experience with your own senses – it’s verifiable such as guests’ voyages service and satisfaction ratings. Inferential knowledge, however, is different – it’s based on “hear-say” and personal opinions. When I read that people are acting as if the inferential knowledge were actually factual, my job will be to point out that it’s “misinformation” or “non-relevant” and offer a fact-based explanation.
For the record, as Chief Blogging Officer I am an authorized representative of Azamara Club Cruises and will receive compensation. Before I retired from the travel industry in 2005, I had spent 30 years in senior sales and marketing positions in the cruise industry. In fact, I was a member of Larry’s executive team at Seabourn Cruise Line while he served as President. I experienced first-hand his operating principle that the journey to brand excellence is never ended – it is evolutionary.
Capturing your feedback will be critical as he guides Azamara forward. All of us at Azamara Club Cruises realize that our most important strategic resource is the quality of our customers’ relationships.
Sincerely,
Bill Leiber
Chief Blogging Officer
Azamara Club Cruises
