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Starting from the 1st of December the Italian cruise company Costa Cruises renewed the cooperation with the Russian operator ‘Neptune’, which was interrupted three years ago. During this time the general representative of Costa in our country was Natalie Tours. ‘However the fact that we are now once again working with Costa Cruises, does not stop ‘Natalie Tours’ from offering their product. It is just that there is nobody else who is an exclusive agent’, - comments Elena Karmanova, marketing director of the cruise company ‘Neptune’.
Behind the scenes market players discussing the reasons for the new strategy say that allegedly the Italian operator was not satisfied by the volume of sales of ‘Natalie’ and decided to sign an agreement with another partner. Meanwhile, the representatives of the cruise company deny this version although they admit that the existing volumes is not enough. ‘Until this moment we have been receiving about 2000 Russian tourists a year and now we want to increase this number as much as we can. It is not easy to succeed in that with one partner as Russia is a large country, so we took a decision. However there should not be any competitions between ‘Natalie’ and ‘Neptune’: both operators are very strong, we are happy with their work and there is enough place on the market for all’ – said Alessandro Bottaro, manager of Costa Cruises of sales in North and East Europe, in an exclusive interview to a BANKO correspondent.
For its part, ‘Natalie tours’ does not grieve over the loss of the status of the only seller of cruises for the Italians. ‘In fact the scheme of work with several agencies simultaneously was taken by Costa Cruises on all markets. What is more, other cruise companies work like this. These alterations are more advantageous than disadvantageous : now we can work with other cruise makers, not losing offerings from Costa,’ says Tatiana Chuvilkina, deputy general director of ‘Natalie’. Experts yet say that the new policy of the cruise-maker has a negative side: clients are used to think of ‘Natalie’ as a representative of Costa Cruises, now they have to be informed about other products.
At the same time as BANKO discovered, on the Russian market there is another actively promoted Italian cruise-maker – MSC, who earlier carried out only freight traffic. Their plans concerning Russia are not yet revealed. Experts say that MSC is quite a strong player, but less advertised and with a smaller number of boats than Costa Cruises. For comparison, MSC has 7 boats while Costa Cruises – 11 cruise liners.
