The marketeer who's smashing records for Cruise.co.uk
Katherine MastersAmar Bains has risen swiftly through the ranks since joining the online cruise agent and now oversees the strategy for a recent acquisition – we discover the TTG 30 Under 30 member’s story
As far as first impressions go, Amar Bains hit the ground running. When he joined Cruise.co.uk in July 2018, fresh from Worcester University, he was hired to pull together the cruise retailer’s bi-weekly customer newsletter, The Bulletin (now called Cruise Talk). Within a few weeks, he had taught himself code using Dreamweaver, and mastered the newsletter, leaving himself extra time to get involved in other areas of the business, such as content writing, search engine optimisation and pay-per-click.
“I’m ambitious,” Amar explains, “I really wanted to broaden my horizons and understand all areas of the business, so I said to Kevin Milnes, digital director at the time, ‘I’m here to help, use me’.”
In August 2019 he was promoted to email marketing executive, and just before the pandemic hit, he helped the business roll out a new marketing strategy. In the early days of Covid, when bookings flatlined, the strategy shifted to consumer updates, positive messaging and market segmentation, so the business was ready to target those with future cruise credits once itineraries came back on sale.
Meanwhile, Amar was helping define the early strategy for Seascanner, a bookable website that Cruise.co.uk now owned, after acquiring German business Kreuzfahrtberater.de in 2016.
He describes how Cruise.co.uk saw a gap in the market – that the UK was missing an e-commerce cruising brand.
“The plan was to launch Seascanner in the UK,” Amar says. “However, the existing Seascanner website was a duplicate of Kreuzfahrtberater.de in English, with products skewed to the German market and payment was taken in euros. We quickly realised localisation – local product, local language – would be key to its success.”
FULL STEAM AHEAD
The project launch was pushed back by Covid, but by spring 2021 Amar was in the thick of it again, working with an agency to rebuild the website from scratch, with Cruise.co.uk’s commercial team to source the right product, and with operations and finance to keep everything flowing.
“We launched at the end of 2021, as the Delta variant hit,” he says. “It couldn’t have been worse timing. But even with the challenges Covid brought, I knew the executive team trusted me and had faith in me to deliver.”
For 12 months in a row, Seascanner delivered 40% more growth per month. “That is my favourite stat,” smiles Amar. “It shows how aggressive our expansion was – we were in full-on scaling mode.”
By the end of year two, bookings were up by 84% year-on-year, and Amar is feeling confident year three will also deliver growth.
The average age of a Seascanner client is 41. “That’s young for cruising,” he says. “Our clients are less anxious about transacting online. We are dominating that market.”
With plenty of rich content such as online port guides and cabin grades for customers to use, the focus had been on the post-booking journey to keep overheads low. But live chat has now been rolled out, to help with the upsell of balconies, for example.
Amar was rewarded for his success in a pivotal role with a promotion that saw him become the youngest ever manager at Cruise.co.uk, aged 23, and then the youngest ever department head of e-commerce and marketing, aged 25.
Initially, he admits to hearing a little voice inside his head ask: “why me?” But he credits his current boss chief marketing officer, Loic Robertson, with helping banish those negative thoughts, and he now confidently runs a weekly meeting, updating all directors about Seascanner.
Overseeing a team of four direct reports, he’s passionate about developing the next generation of talent, hoping to propel more Cruise.co.uk rising stars into the 30 Under 30 spotlight. But he also has clear boundaries: “I have type 1 diabetes and I’m very mindful of my work-life balance,” he explains. “If I look after myself health-wise, then work will sort itself out.”
Meet more of TTG's 30 Under 30
Read in-depth interviews with CheerTravel's Stephanie Needley; Tui UK's Molly Attwell; Travel Counsellors' Jack Prescott; Virgin Voyages' Jack Atherton; and Newcastle International Airport's Tom Spencer.
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Katherine Masters
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