NCL's John Chernesky on improving support for travel advisors

Travel Weekly

9 hours ago

When Norwegian Cruise Line's John Chernesky joined the company in April 2023 as senior vice president of sales for North America, he said his goal was to keep the line fresh in the minds of travel advisors. In a conversation with cruise editor Teri West in May, he reflected on his first two years in the role and why NCL's grades are getting better.
John Chernesky
Q: Tell me about how these first two years have been for you at the company and what you've learned in that time.
A: It's hard to believe it's only been two years. It feels longer, in a good way, because I have really enjoyed my time. I love my team. I love the culture at NCL. Don't tell my boss I said this, but he's great. He has really allowed me to get into the weeds and understand the business of NCL and how does that then apply to the travel agent community.
At the end of the day, my job is to be the biggest advocate for the travel advisor community that I can be internally within NCL, because I believe in the service that they provide, the value proposition they provide to their clients, that we simply can't succeed without them.
Q: Are there any challenges that are shaping the way you think about the next year or two?
A: I think it's the natural challenges of the industry, which are many, but we are, thankfully, very successful because, again, people see the value in cruising, and they want to go again and they want to bring their friends or family.
Q: How have you seen the relationship between the cruise line and advisors evolve during this two-year tenure?
A: I like to think it's gotten better, because I think I'm a very transparent, authentic person, in the sense that I will do my very best to tell you the truth. I'm not going to say the sky is blue if it's raining. And the success I think our team has had is that we focused on trying to be the easiest business partner that travel agencies work with. They have many suppliers that they work with -- multiple cruise lines, river lines, airlines, resorts, insurance companies, you name it. People want to work with people who make life easy for them, and there are other choices out there. And so our goal has been to become the easiest cruise line to work with.
We actually measure ourselves in an annual survey [sent to travel agencies], and we're about to issue our 2025 survey in a couple weeks. ... I go back to my academic days, which, by the way, weren't fantastic, and I boil it down to, are we "A" students, are we "B" students, are we "C" students, etc. And when I started, the survey said we were "C" students, and last year we were "B" students. We made a lot of progress. And so I'm hopeful we're "A" students this year, but the time will tell with the survey.
Q: Can you give me a little context about why travel advisors gave NCL a better grade?
A: We had issues that we were solving with our air program, which has gotten a lot better. We had some sales support issues that we weren't very good at solving, and we shifted our focus there and made that process a lot more efficient, a lot better. Those were the two big things. And then systems, as well, our booking engine. We've launched a new system called Quest, which is not fully rolled out yet, and it only has a small fraction of the capabilities that it will ultimately have, but little things like that show we're listening and taking action.
I like to be honest and say, "Hey, if we can do something we will do it, and if we can't, I'm sorry we can't do that now, but maybe in six months we'll try it again." And so I think that transparency has helped, and the agency community sees that we're taking action.