Skift CMO Interviews: Avalon Waterways on Offering an Alternative

Editor's Note: Following our previous CEO interview series in online travel, hospitality, and destinations, Skift has launched a new series, this time focused on Chief Marketing Officers. To better understand the big marketing challenges facing travel brands in an age when consumers are in control, Skift's What Keeps CMOs Up at Night will talk with the leading voices in global marketing from across all the industry's sectors. These interviews with leaders of hotels, airlines, tourism boards, digital players, agents, tour operators and more will explore both shared and unique challenges they are facing, where they get insights, and how they best leverage digital insights to make smarter decisions. This is the latest interview in the series. The fast-growing river cruise industry has earned significant attention from consumers in recent years largely due to the television presence from one main player, Viking River Cruises, which scored with tie-ins to the popular program Downton Abbey. Smaller competitor Avalon Waterways didn't want to just reap the benefits of interest in a rival, so the operator — part of the Globus family of brands — decided to run its first ever television ads late last year. The commercials focused on the views on Avalon ships and positioned the brand as a river alternative. A second run followed earlier this year. Steve Born, vice president of marketing for the Global brands, said Avalon saw a nearly 200 percent increase in traffic to the site during the first run and realized it needed to be better prepared to take advantage of that interest. "That volume of interest in search for the first flight was a little bit surprising to us," Born said. Skift spoke to Born about Avalon's push into TV, pricing pressures as competition heats up in the river cruise segment, and how travelers feel about going to Europe this year. He mentioned last year's attack in Paris, but the interview was conducted before the bombings in Brussels earlier this spring. Skift: What were some of your biggest successes, unexpected and otherwise in 2015? Born: From a marketing standpoint, the biggest success was actually our foray into TV. We had made a careful plan to not just do mass TV and just create awareness for the category, but really to be super targeted with capitalizing on some category demand that has already being created by a competitor at Viking. We call it "Smart TV," and it was really our orien