Tis but a name….right?

You may or may not have seen the recent news that Thomson (or should I say Tui as we should now be calling them) have gone one step further in their rebranding process and have renamed the cruise part of the company Marella. To be completely correct I should say that Thomson’s are no longer Thomson’s. They are changing to Tui as seen on their adverts. They are crossing the t, dotting the i and putting ‘u’ in the middle. Nice tag line, but are you as confused as I am?

So where does Marella come from?

Apparently it means ‘Shining Sea’ in Celtic and was chosen to give the cruise line its own identity from the company’s European brand, Tui Cruises and to give them a stand out in the cruising market.

I personally think its a little bonkers, but Im sure the marketing team and board members know more about branding than I do. I still hear clients referring to Thomson’s as Lunn Polly which takes us way back through the years to what they were called before they did the first name change. Now we’re changing again. I cant keep up!

So whats the reasoning behind it? Distribution and cruise director Helen Caron said: “We don’t want British guests to be confused with the group’s cruise business in Europe. Marella Cruises will still have the Tui smile logo, but a new Marella Cruises logo in a blue box, similar to the way we would market Sensatori as part of the world of Tui.  The name was chosen to reflect the spirit of exploration and discovery across the seas.”

There will be no change to the ships themselves, they will all just be renamed Marella instead of Thomson and the cruise line will still continue to include flights from 22 regional airports but perhaps the most exciting prospect for me from all this is the anouncement of a new home port in Asia for 2018. The Marella Duscovery will sail from Langkawi to 18 new ports of call with customers also able to join from Bangkok. Ports of call include Ho Chi Minh City, Cambodia and Kuala Lumpur, and also to Mumbai, Mangalore, Cochin and Colombo and a big selling point for some of you is that these 14 brand spanking itineraries will be completely child free!! Yes, adult only I hear you cry.

So there we have it, the name change, the reason and a big announcement. What do you make of it all?


About Me

Hi there, My name is Isabelle, I'm 31 years old and I live in a small village in a lovely part of rural Lincolnshire with my husband Carl who I married on the beautiful island of Rhodes in 2012, our daughter Lexi who is 6 and our son Oliver who is 3. Oh…

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