Princess Cruises has announced the appointment of Rebecca Kelly to the newly-created position of senior sales manager for Ireland.
Starting on March 18th, Kelly will be based in Dublin and report into Rachel Poultney, Princess Cruises’ sales director UK & Europe, as the line continues to expand its presence in Ireland after a record 12 months of year-on-year growth.
She will be responsible for managing and developing the commercial relationships with the Irish travel trade, and delivering further growth of Princess’ trade business through enhanced agent training and engagement.
With a background of over ten years agent support in Ireland, Kelly has a wealth of experience in developing trade relationships, taking leadership of the brand strategy and increasing sales.
Poultney said: “We are so excited to have Rebecca join the team – we’ve had a storming year in Ireland with huge potential for further growth.
“Now that we have Rebecca onboard, we’re confident the success of Princess Cruises in Ireland will continue into 2019 and beyond.”
Ruby Princess
Also today, Princess Cruises announced that Chinese guests onboard Ruby Princess have the option to utilise both Alipay and WeChat Pay payment options while shopping in the boutiques.
This makes Princess Cruises the first and the only cruise line to offer both Alipay and WeChat Pay payment options onboard a passenger cruise ship in North America.
Alipay and WeChat Pay are China’s top-two popular forms of digital payment.
Alipay is China’s most popular digital wallet service and lifestyle platform and is expanding to in-store, offline payments both inside and outside of China.
WeChat Pay is another widely used digital wallet service and mobile payment app in China.
WeChat Pay now has 800 million monthly active users worldwide and total volume a year in 2017 was about US$6.5 trillion.
“We have heard from our guests that incorporating Chinese mobile payment services provides a more convenient way to travel,” said Gordon Ho, chief marketing officer of Princess Cruises.