For years, cruise marketing has leaned heavily on traditional mediums like magazines and radio, aiming primarily at mature travelers. But when Expedia Cruises teamed up with MSC Cruises to spotlight the launch of the new MSC World America, the goal was to challenge that status quo.
Younger travelers aren’t opposed to cruising; they simply tune out legacy advertising.
And our work evolving Expedia Cruises to adopt a social-first approach recently earned them a prestigious Travel Weekly Magellan Award. Backed by Travel Weekly, the industry’s most influential and trusted B2B publication, the Magellan Awards represent the premier benchmark of excellence in the travel sector. Judged by an independent, world-class panel of top industry veterans and former executives, the awards honor genuine innovation, creative brilliance, and measurable impact across marketing, design, and operations. Earning a Magellan statuette signals that a campaign didn’t just meet industry standards, but actively redefined them.
The Strategy
The challenge was simple: the barrier with younger audiences was never their willingness to book, but the difficulty of reaching them authentically at scale. By shifting the focus from transaction-heavy sales pitches to aspirational lifestyle storytelling, the campaign aimed to showcase the freedom, discovery, and value of booking through a dedicated, local Expedia Cruises Vacation Consultant.
To overcome that barrier, the campaign embraced a two-pronged strategy: uniting digital creator storytelling with the secret sauce of the brand’s brick-and-mortar retail network (organic content from experienced Vacation Consultants).
The Execution
We partnered with travel content creator Madison Lee, who documented an end-to-end voyage aboard MSC World America—from the ease of trip planning at a local center to experiencing the ship’s distinct districts and entertainment.
This content was amplified across Meta via full-funnel paid media and Instant Forms, seamlessly routing high-intent leads to local Expedia Cruises centers for personalized follow-up. Simultaneously, the brand’s vast retail network of Vacation Consultants attending the ANCHOR conference generated organic buzz using provided asset packs and personal onboard photos, driving widespread local engagement.
The Outcomes
The dual approach challenged long-held industry assumptions about cruise demographics.
The 25–44 age group was the most engaged cohort by far, with engagements increasing from what typically was in the hundreds for Expedia Cruises, to the tens of thousands (approximately 25,600).
Most importantly, the engagement turned into business results with conversions proving the strategy’s viability: 18–45-year-olds converted into bookings at ~20%, running neck-and-neck with the ~21% conversion rate of traditional older demographics.
By pairing a creator-led narrative with the trusted guidance of local retail consultants, Expedia Cruises built a modern, award-winning playbook to grow the cruising category for years to come.
