Celestyal Cruises is making it clear that travel advisors are central to its next chapter. With new training initiatives and a renewed focus on partnership, the cruise line is equipping advisors to sell with greater confidence and creativity.
First stop: Wave Season. Celestyal is making booking their sailings easy during this important selling season, says John Diorio, the line’s Managing Director & VP of North America Sales. The line is currently offering 50 percent off 226 Greek, Med and Arabian Gulf sailings departing through October 2027. But, as Diorio notes, its Wave Season offerings are divided into two parts—the current offer is available for booking through Feb. 5. They’ll then revisit the offer to decide whether they want to keep the offer going or take it down a notch. The promotion also features select sailings with additional bonuses of up to €500 ($582 U.S.) CelestyalPay credit, which can be used on board for specialty restaurant dining and bar beverages and cocktails, as well as shore excursion credit of up to €200 ($232.50 US) on 186 sailings.
“We’re trying to create a little bit of demand,” and, he adds, “the feedback we’ve gotten from the advisor community so far has been really, really positive. They like the inclusions that we have in the fare for their customers.”
He points out that there are a lot of 2026 sailings travel advisors can promote to their customers, including pricing that starts at $939 per person for sailings in Greece and the Med, and for four nights, it’s $499 per person.
Making a Star Out of You
And when it comes to travel advisors gaining more knowledge about Celestyal Cruises, Diorio says the line has upped the ante when it comes to its advisor training.
The new Celestyal Stars education and training program, he says, is a result of the team wanting to enhance the learning experience to better educate advisors on what makes the cruise line unique and its differentiators.
“We need the advisor community to really understand what makes Celestyal, Celestyal and where our differentiators are and why it’s important to understand the brand and the things that we do differently.
“So, if we could reimagine the training program, what would we call it; what would it look like? And so, we’ve now changed the program and we’re calling it Celestyal Stars. And this came from a lot of feedback from partners that we talked to that have gone through the training before,” he notes. “This is a true education path. The previous program, [Celestyal Campus], you could kind of come in and pick modules you wanted to learn about, but there wasn’t a kind of process. There wasn’t a learning path to take you from A to Z to understand everything you wanted about our brand.”
The new program, continues Diorio, offers four different tiers—Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. “And we put the 10 modules [from the previous program] in those categories and we created six more modules. So, there are four modules in each of the categories. The way we changed it is you have to start at Bronze and go all the way through Platinum, and the learning modules are very interactive, they’re fun and you are learning.
“But as you go through the program, as you get done with, say, your Bronze or your Silver category, we are then sending you a certificate of completion. We want you to brag about it as advisors.
“More importantly, we’ve got rewards as advisors go through the program. This could be exclusive access to exclusive rates, discounts on cruises. We’re doing giveaways, onboard credit for the advisor, for getting through the training program.”
Diorio is very excited about this new training program, which launched in December, because he sees the impact of gaining education on a brand. “It’s invaluable,” he says. This program in particular, he adds, “is going to build more engagement on what we do and what makes Celesytal different.”
Diorio is looking forward to what this new year brings and what’s to come for the brand, nothing that they are “rethinking everything that we’re putting in place for 2026. We started with our training program, we’re in the process of reimagining our signup process as we speak, and it’s really also about the stories we tell and how we talk about this brand.”
