MIAMI — Celebrity Cruises has restructured its sales team to better support trade partners and key accounts.

According to Dondra Ritzenthaler, Senior Vice President of Sales, The Americas, and Keith Lane, Vice President of Sales, The Americas, the new structure comes into effect on May 23 and includes:

• Aligning Inside Sales with National Accounts under the leadership of Jennifer Suarez, Associate Vice President of National Accounts
• Providing top field accounts with key account manager support
• Driving incremental trade business in key cities via the line’s Field Sales Managers, who will also be armed with marketing and social media tools such as Branch Up, for Celerity’s valued partners

In addition, Celebrity’s Regional Marketing Managers will be refocused on supporting key partner marketing efforts by curating various tools and resources to help grow business, including leveraging Celebrity’s Marketing Assistance Program 2.0 (MAP), accessible through CruisingPower.com. MAP features educational modules, webinars and ideation workshops all designed to share best practices and tools to enhance marketing efforts.

“Our trade partners have always been the most critical part of Celebrity’s distribution model and we remain vitally important to one another’s future success as we re-emerge from the post-shutdown world,” said Ritzenthaler. “This new structure leverages our very talented sales team to uniquely support our national and key accounts with more frequent and consistent points of contact at every stage of the sales process to drive win/win results for everyone.”

Lane added: “We know that rebuilding marketing plans and programs is a critical need for so many of our trade partners. I’m especially excited about deploying our Regional Marketing Managers to literally swoop in and leverage their expertise to help our travel partners reignite their marketing and attract first to cruise and first to brand.”

The new structure comes on the heels of several product introductions from Celebrity, including FlexPay, which allows customization of how and when reservation balances are paid, and a new Future Cruise Credit redemption option that applies credits directly to outstanding balances.