Weighing where a travel brand’s fleet should go

The question

A travel company had to commit part of its fleet to a summer and a winter season years ahead, and the date for the decision was fixed.

Appeal to guests mattered, and so did ports, flights, guest sourcing and finance. There was no time to finish the research first and plan afterwards, so the evidence from travelers and the operational reality had to come together in one process.

Our approach

Itineraries were built with the company’s team and shown the way a brochure would show them, to recent guests, competitors’ customers and first-time considerers in the US, the UK and Australia.

A model built on reach principles then rated thousands of possible combinations of itineraries by market and type of traveler, so the whole program could be judged as a set.

In a series of working sprints with the deployment and insight teams, we set the model’s best theoretical option against operations, flights and finance, and modeled every realistic alternative in a bespoke simulator.

What the team came away with

The senior leadership team received an assessment ready for a decision, presented jointly by our team and the company’s own.

It set the model’s best theoretical option beside the operational realities, with the strengths and weaknesses of every alternative, so appeal to travelers, the likely profile of guests and the practical constraints could be read together.

Scorecards for every itinerary tested, and the modeling tool itself, stayed with the planning team, so further scenarios could be worked through as plans moved.

Because the planners had built the options with us, the leadership session could go straight to the choices that remained.