Catching Up with PONANT’s Sam Chamberlain
by Dori Saltzman
Photo: PONANT
After many years on the sales side of the travel industry at notable hospitality companies like Hilton and Waldorf Astoria, Sam Chamberlain, CEO of PONANT, Americas, understands the value of travel advisors. And he’s brought his enthusiasm for the trade to his role at the French luxury cruise line.
“I’m a fierce advocate for travel advisors and the value they bring,” Chamberlain told TMR. “And if you look at the cruise industry broadly, travel advisors play an enormous role.”
He added, “high net worth travelers are adventurous, and they like to explore in groups and families and travel advisors really do bring that.”
His enthusiasm for advisors is strong enough that his top priority from the start – he’s been with PONANT for about 11 months – has been reaching more of them.
“I would say the largest priority is sharing this exceptional established brand with the North American and South American markets. Our market awareness is in the United States has a long way to go for how great our delivery is,” he said. “My mandate is to promote what we deliver in terms of multicultural cruising…”
To help with that, Chamberlain told TMR he’s a huge advocate of ship tours and FAM trips and is working to create more opportunities for advisors to get onboard.
“Bringing more advisors on our ships is a huge priority of mine. I can think of no better way to better sell it than is to see it. There’s something about the human condition, as soon as you step onto something, you see it, you touch it, you understand it.”
Why PONANT?
Aside from a short stay as vice president of business development for Marc-Henry Cruise Holdings, the joint owner and operator of Four Seasons Yacht, Chamberlain had never worked in the luxury cruise segment before joining PONANT. He also had little familiarity with expedition cruising. But a quick look at what PONANT offered was all he needed.
“The brand, the company, deserves a lot of attention because of the product that we offer,” he told TMR. “The deliverables are just unmatched.”
Part of what drew him to PONANT were its fleet of small luxury ships and its itineraries. With 14 ships, PONANT touches 110 countries across more than 400 itineraries.
“I was just shocked with the opportunity and how great the product is… They’re right on point with what luxury travel trend in the United States, which is small ships. Small ships are definitely where the magic happens.”
Who Is the PONANT client?
For advisors – and clients – who might already be familiar with PONANT, there has been in the past an idea that the line is for Francophiles only. We asked Chamberlain who the right client is for the line and is it, in fact only for those who love everything French.
“At PONANT, we’re definitely promoting what I’ll call multicultural cruising,” Chamberlain explained. “I do believe that there is a traveler that wants to be on a ship that has a very diverse guest mix.”
Which, of course, PONANT does, with guests from France, North America, Australia, Germany, the U.K., Latin America, and China.
“Multicultural cruising is a thing that our guests gravitate towards.”
It’s also a given, he added, that these are high-net-worth clients with an interest in exploration and adventure.
But Is It “Too” French?
“What I really emphasize is that our French service delivery is French flair,” Chamberlain said.
Announcements are in both French and English, and crew speak both languages. You don’t have to be a Francophile to enjoy a PONANT cruise, he emphasized.
In fact, he said, the line’s net promoter scores from its international markets (including North America) are higher than its net promoter scores for its French guests.
“I think that PONANT has had this transformation of becoming an international brand that welcomes all markets and it’s a bit of a change from the past for sure,” Chamberlain told TMR. “We continue to internationalize, we continue to change the delivery and the culture for internationalization.”
He pointed out that the international quality of the ship makes it great for solo travelers.
“This idea of meeting interesting people on board – with no single supplement – is a great way to connect with lots of different people,” he said.
(PONANT offers a category of stateroom on every sailing that has no single supplement.)
Repeatable
Another message Chamberlain wanted to make clear for travel advisors is the line’s repeatability. With more than 400 itineraries to destinations around the globe, there’s always a new option for clients.
“I think not a lot of travel advisors understand or know the breadth of our itineraries… It’s not as if PONANT only serves one destination. You could keep having clients rebook with us and keep building that relationship with you… and we’ll never run out of itineraries.”
Back End Merge, Multiple Brands
In 2019, PONANT purchased Paul Gauguin Cruises, growing from a single brand to an umbrella company with two distinct brands. (PONANT Explorations Group recently acquired a majority stake in Aqua Expeditions, making it a three-brand cruise company, but that occurred after TMR’s interview with Chamberlain.)
When Chamberlain joined as CEO of the Americas in 2024 both brands were operating independently of each other. One of his first priorities was to merge their back-end operations to bring efficiency and expand each brand’s reach. The back-end merger also made the brands more travel advisor friendly, he said.
“Our customer care center, our call center, and our reservations team have more scale now… We are building one collective culture that sells all the brands and all the experiences…”
The combination of the two sales team into one has allowed the company to redraw it’s sales territories and create more of them, which in turn is helping to build successful relationships directly with travel advisors.
“Now we have smaller, deeper sales territories, which allows us to have stronger customer relationships,” he said. “We have scale, but we also have specificity in the sense that we have our travel agency sales team on the ground in smaller, more focused territories. That’s been a huge win for the travel advisor.”
While the back ends for each of the PONANT Explorations Group brands have been merged, the brands remain distinct. There are no plans for that to change.
“We’re not trying to make Paul Gauguin more PONANT,” he said.
He added, “The difference in the delivery, of having distinct branded experiences under our PONANT Explorations portfolio is something that I’m embracing and championing,” he said. “Today we have Paul Gauguin and PONANT. The opportunity for our team to be promoting and championing other branded experiences isn’t off the table.”
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