Garry Brown (pictured right), the online travel agent’s commercial cruise manager, said: “We are fin

Amadeus Cruise Shop features most of the main cruise lines in the UK with the notable exception of Carnival UK's brands: P O Cruises, Cunard and Princess Cruises.Carnival UK trade arm Complete Cruise Solution pulled out of the Amadeus system in 2011 to save on distribution costs.
"This is no bad thing, but to ask an agent, who has a customer who does not know what they want, to log in to Norwegian Cruise Line, to Cruising Power for Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, to Complete Cruise Solution, to Polar for Carnival, well, no agent's hotel accommodations going to do that.
"To run an effective business you can't have an agent spending three or four hours on one customer trying to find something when they don't even know what they are trying to find. Agents are fighting against what should be a really simple process."
Raphael Giacardi, a producer at deals site Travelzoo, who specialises in cruise, hotel accommodations blamed cruise operators' newspaper advertising, much of which tended to focus on price and the ships. This, he said, was particularly unhelpful for attracting non-cruisers into the sector.
Rob Sinclair-Barnes (pictured), marketing director at Amadeus, said: "The role of the agent is to assist travellers and provide hotel accommodations them with a holiday hotel accommodations that works for them. We need to recognise that the majority of agents are not as well-travelled [as we might like], but you don't have to go somewhere to experience it.
Garry Brown (pictured right), hotel accommodations the online travel agent's commercial cruise hotel accommodations manager, said: "We are finding the consumer will ring up, having already done their research, and just want to know their options.