Thread: Carnival Cruise Line Censoring Social Media

Carnival Cruise Lines has recently made an announcement that all travel partners, beginning in 2010, will not be allowed to use the Carnival trademarks, including reference to the brand, without prior authorization.

Think about it, all those Cruise Deals posted here cannot mention Carnival Cruise Lines, even if the travel agent posting them was of excellent reputation. Twitter and Facebook are also being targeted by the Carnival Cruise Social Media monitoring team.

Travel Agents and Cruise Specialist: Speak up...what do you think about this new regulation from Carnival Cruise Lines?

Social Media Users: (You can follow CruiseLineFans at: http://www.twitter.com/CruiseLineFans

What do you think about this form of "censorship" being employed by large companies?

In my opinion , this move only hamstrings Carnival's partners, the trusted travel agents and cruise specialists we have come to rely on and that work extremely hard to broadcast special offers on a continuing basis, thereby selling cabins on Carnival ships.

Here is an article for further reading: Is Carnival Cruise Lines trying to muzzle social media? | Tnooz

Here is the Travel Weekly article announcing the change:

All of Carnival Corp.'s North American brands -- Carnival, Princess, Holland America, Cunard and Seabourn -- have modified their paid search requirements and guidelines for third parties, including travel agents, so that others may no longer bid on the lines' branded keywords.

Effective Jan. 1, the lines said that the reason for the new rules is to eliminate confusion online when a consumer does a search for their brand.

"When a consumer searches for Carnival, they're seeking Carnival content and the goal is to provide the cleanest, straight path to the most comprehensive Carnival content available, which is on Carnival.com," said Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer De La Cruz. "This approach of restricting third parties from bidding on a company's branded keywords is becoming commonplace throughout the retail sector."

Princess spokeswoman Julie Benson noted, "We believe most consumers will see this as positive, and will be able to easily find the information they're looking for. They can then take all the info they've researched and bring it to an agency for booking."

The lines' parent company, Carnival Corp., said this is not a corporate initiative but a brand-specific decision.

Carnival Cruise Lines added that it would continue to maintain the travel agency locator on Carnival.com and that travel agencies may continue to include Carnival in the ad text portion of the search results as long as the agency is following Carnival's established guidelines for online advertising.

UPDATE: All of Carnival Corp.'s brands in North America have implemented the new paid search requirements for third parties..

At this time, Carnival Cruise Lines is stating that they did not intend for the guidelines to be so far reaching and are working on re-wording currently.

Regardless of their true motivation, the issue was publicized earlier this week and the response generated was quite massive, including large threads on USA Today's Cruise Log and on Twitter. Within the week, Carnival has listened to the responses and is hopefully making changes based upon those criticisms.

We shall keep a close eye on this matter at CruiseLineFans.

Wow! That is biting the hand that feeds you! I hope Carnival is seeing the handwriting on the wall and reconsiders hamstringing the very travel professionals who sell their product.

Bad move, Carnival!

I have always used their Ad Wizard in the Travel Agent Only area to advertise my groups. I don't think this impacts the Specials included in said area since you can only access this area if you are a registered travel agent.

bad move and a bit silly. i don't think someone has thought this through.

Originally Posted by MD11F

I have always used their Ad Wizard in the Travel Agent Only area to advertise my groups. I don't think this impacts the Specials included in said area since you can only access this area if you are a registered travel agent.

Hey Ken,

Based upon my reading of the current wording, you would require express permission, unless usage of the Ad Wizard implies this...which I don't think it does.

Carnival is currently re-examining the wording, with the hopes of de-scoping some of the restrictions put in place by the current document.

Originally Posted by MD11F

I have always used their Ad Wizard in the Travel Agent Only area to advertise my groups. I don't think this impacts the Specials included in said area since you can only access this area if you are a registered travel agent.

What they were trying to do is essentially prevent you from representing their brands without express permission....simply saying Carnival on CruiseLineFans, Facebook or Twitter, without this permission would seemingly violate the current terms .

But, as I stated above, its an ongoing issue.

Originally Posted by timwilloughby

What they were trying to do is essentially prevent you from representing their brands without express permission....simply saying Carnival on CruiseLineFans, Facebook or Twitter, without this permission would seemingly violate the current terms .

But, as I stated above, its an ongoing issue.

Ok Tim, I re-read the article as it became obvious I'd miss something. I do not bid on any cruise lines branding keywords, so it does not matter to me. It will affect those travel partners(travel agents) who do. I'm wondering if there was some form of misuse. (edited)

Originally Posted by MD11F

Ok Tim, I re-read the article as it became obvious I'd miss something. I do not bid on any cruise lines branding keywords, so it does not matter to me. It will affect those travel partners(travel agents) who do. I'm wondering if there was some form of misuse. (edited)

I can sympathize with Carnival Cruise Lines desire to prevent any fraud from taking place in the social networking arena....hoping to prevent anyone from posing as Carnival employees, etc. and generally, manage their brand from a united, singular position.

Its the latter point I think I take issue with....one's brand or their company's brand is constantly being updated, managed and tweaked internally, as well as shaped by customers and partners. These partnership relationships are crucial to a company like Carnival, involved in the travel industry, and they should be careful to manage them from a perspective of cooperations and exchange.

Cheers Ken for chiming in....any other CCL familiar travel agents concerned about how this might effect your online business strategy?