Princess Cruises is taking its travel agent partners behind the scenes of its latest brand campaign, with the cruise line using new Channel Nine series Chefs Ahoy to put its onboard experience in front of a mass Australian audience.
The four-part series on Channel 9 and 9Now, puts Australian chefs against each other aboard Princess Cruises ships, combining food, travel and the cruise experience.
Hosted by Peter Helliar, ‘Chefs Ahoy’ sees two chefs per episode explore local food cultures before returning to the ship to recreate their dishes at scale for passengers at the Captain’s Dinner.
The series travels through Greece, Japan, Spain and South Korea aboard Sun Princess and Diamond Princess, with up to 4,000 passengers acting as the judges.
For Princess Cruises, however, the campaign extends beyond the television audience, with the brand bringing its travel agent network into the activation through premiere events in Sydney and Brisbane.
The events give travel agents the opportunity to experience the series ahead of its national launch, while equipping them to engage with customers expected to show increased interest in the cruises and destinations featured on screen.
Princess Cruises senior director sales and marketing, Asia Pacific, Nick Ferguson, said the series represented a significant investment in the brand.
“Chefs Ahoy is a significant investment in the Princess brand and a great opportunity to showcase the experience to a broad Australian audience,” Ferguson said. “Our travel agent partners are such an important part of our business, and we want them to feel part of the campaign – watching the show, sharing the content and being ready to capture the demand and increased interest we expect the series to generate.”
The campaign gives Princess a way to sell more than the destinations themselves, with the ships and onboard experience forming a central part of the television format.
The chefs in the series are shown travelling through local markets and food destinations before returning to the ship’s galleys, where they have to scale their dishes for hundreds or thousands of passengers.
The culinary match-ups include Minoli De Silva and Courtney Roulston in Greece, Miguel Maestre and Dan Hong in Japan, Mark LaBrooy and Khanh Ong in Spain, and Vincent Yeow Lim and Alice Zaslavsky in South Korea.
The series kicks off on September 30 at 8.45pm.
