Costa Germany ready to hit the road with restructured sales force

Trendy venues

The road show kicks off Nov. 5 at The Box, a trendy location and concept store in Hamburg. Following an aperitif, travel agents will get a briefing about the latest Costa developments with a special focus on 2019's Costa Smeralda. Following several entertaining but educational workshops, the event will close with a festive dinner.

The road show is going to stop at cities throughout Germany before it closes Nov. 22 with a second event at Hamburg, this time at the Sturmfreie Bude Alster.

The format at each event will be identical, and Costa has chosen unusual, hip locations everywhere.

New sales team under Jörg Rudolph

The road show debuts Costa's new German sales team, assembled in recent months. In March, Jörg Rudolph joined as country manager. Rudolph, who took over from Hardy Puls, is a seasoned travel trade executive whose previous jobs included SVP sales and marketing at AIDA, MD of Color Line Germany and MD Germany/Austria/Switzerland for RCL Cruises Ltd.

Michael Ellert leads trade sales

Michael Ellert, a veteran of Royal Caribbean and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, joined in September in the newly created head of trade sales position. Ellert leads a significantly expanded sales team which now numbers 18. Seven are dedicated to travel agents.

Rudolph and the sales group are based in Hamburg.

With the new structure in place, Costa now has a team exclusively taking care of its own products, separate from sister company AIDA, Germany's largest cruise brand.