The Making of A Forum By Liz Gammon, Manager Shore Excursions and Cruise services, Iceland Travel
As the manager of the shore excursion department at Iceland Travel, I don’t have a huge marketing budget, and as such, I have to be very selective of how I go about spending it. I, like many others, was due to attend Cruise Shipping Miami that following March, and I figured that this would be the ideal time and platform from which to launch such a trailblazing venture. Given my restrictive marketing budget, the initial idea involved putting together an event that would include other professional women from around the globe and have them join me in funding it. I
Photos by Mary Bond, Seatrade Insider
T
he inaugural Professional Women in Cruise Forum took place on the 15th of March during Cruise Shipping Miami. I never once doubted that it would be a success, but that it would be such a huge success and that the initiative would be so loudly applauded was something that I will admit I had not quite expected. What started out as a somewhat simple marketing venture ended up as a journey of enlightenment revealing the many prolific roles of women in the cruise industry. It was in September 2011 following a cruise industry related trade show and conference that it struck me how many influential women I had the pleasure of meeting. Not just from the cruise executive side, but also my fellow exhibitors and conference attendees. I had the feeling that if these women could be brought together by way of an event, then it would provide the industry with something new and exciting.
Michele M. Paige with Iceland Travel's Liz Gammon
NCL´s Michelle Diaz winner of the prize draw with Liz Gammon
contacted two colleagues whom I knew would be interested in supporting the idea (Anne Sommerfeld of Iberoservice and Monica Frisk of Helsinborg Business Region), and it basically grew from there. A total of 18 women from various countries signed up to act as sponsor hosts, and so began the task of pulling together an invitation list. Given that my area of interest is shore excursions, I freely admit that I previously had no idea quite how many women are involved in the cruise industry as a whole. Planning this event really opened
my eyes to this and is something that I find to be quite notable and inspiring. It became apparent whilst compiling the invitation list that numbers would have to be restricted, despite there being so many creative and talented women that deserved to be included. In fact, we could have involved many more than we eventually did, but it was decided that it would be better to take small steps and stay on the path than to move forward too quickly and run the risk of falling off track. Along with the
Second Quarter 2012 • Cruising Magazine 41