A cruise ship is an unusually persuasive object. It fills the photograph, carries the restaurants, supplies the spectacle and gets the name painted on its hull. Yet when Jason Krimmel talks about selling one to an international traveler, his attention often drifts off the ship. He thinks about the flight into Europe. The hotel before embarkation. The week after disembarkation. The travel adviser who knows whether a client wants a museum, a beach or a quiet room near the airport.
In April 2025, Krimmel gave that surrounding journey a memorable label. The “secret sauce,” he said, was managing the land vacation that supplements a seven- or 10-day sailing. For an Australian guest who may take a 21-day holiday, the arithmetic is obvious: the cruise is the anchor, but it is not the whole trip. A company that optimizes only the days at sea leaves much of the customer’s experience to chance.
That is a surprisingly roomy idea for someone whose title sits inside a cruise line. Krimmel is Norwegian Cruise Line’s Chief International Sales and Marketing Officer, responsible for the business outside North America. His remit covers 11 offices across Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Brazil. The job sounds global because it is. The interesting part is how local his public thinking remains.
The long way to a wide brief
Krimmel is originally from Philadelphia. He studied at Temple University, earning a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in marketing. In 2003, he joined NCL as a business development manager for North Texas. It was a field role, close to the people who explain a product to travelers and close to the objections that stand between curiosity and a booking.
He stayed. The company record traces his progression through Director of Field Sales and Business Development, where he led NCL’s U.S.-based business development managers, and Vice President of Trade Marketing and Engagement. He later became Vice President of International Marketing and Global Creative Strategy. In that role, he led “Break Free,” described by NCL as its largest international marketing campaign at the time, with television integrations around the world.
The sequence matters. Sales territory, national field team, trade engagement, creative strategy, international business. Each stop added a new surface to the same question: how does a holiday move from an idea in someone’s head to a paid itinerary on a calendar?
In early 2023, the remit widened again. Krimmel took responsibility for international sales and marketing, working across regional teams and reporting into NCL’s commercial leadership. His first British trade interview was notable for its refusal to stage a dramatic entrance. The UK and Ireland team was already strong, he said. There was “absolutely no need for revolution.” His task was to support its continued development and connect regional marketing teams more closely with agency marketing teams.
“Trade partners are and will continue to be a critical and substantial part of our business.”Jason Krimmel, 2023
The adviser knows the traveler
Travel advisers recur in Krimmel’s comments because they hold context. A booking system may know inventory. An adviser knows the person choosing from it. When Krimmel discussed NCL’s work on an in-house booking engine in 2025, the ambition extended beyond the cabin: flights, hotels, tours before the cruise and arrangements after it. Both travelers and the trade would be able to use it.
His description of the adviser’s role was precise. They know the profile of the client, the client’s lifestyle and what will appeal to them. Technology could assemble the pieces, but the adviser could turn those pieces into a trip that made sense. The logic comes naturally from an executive who spent years working with the trade before owning a broader marketing brief.
It also changes what counts as the product. For a long-haul Australian traveler, expensive airfare can restrain demand even when interest in Europe or Asia is high. A longer hotel stay may make the flight worthwhile. Back-to-back sailings with different itineraries may fit a three-week holiday better than an isolated week aboard. The operational details become marketing details because each one can decide whether the trip feels possible.
Eleven offices, different friction
International scale tempts a company to flatten markets into flags on a slide. Krimmel’s remarks instead reveal different forms of friction. In Britain, he saw room to grow family travel and suite bookings while keeping agents close. In Australia, the constraint included long-haul air capacity and the shape of a longer holiday. In Brazil, NCL’s travelers favored Europe first, then the Caribbean; he wanted to introduce more of them to Alaska, Hawaii and Asia.
Taiwan required yet another playbook. In 2023, Krimmel joined a delegation visiting the cruise terminals in Kaohsiung and Keelung as NCL prepared Norwegian Spirit’s 2024 return to the market through a charter partnership. There, the task was not merely to promote an itinerary. It was to align a cruise line, a local travel group, ports and public agencies around a return to the region.
The pattern is not uniformity. It is a shared system with room for local evidence. Sales hears what blocks the booking. Marketing frames the promise. Regional teams know the culture and the calendar. Headquarters can supply inventory, creative material and a larger view. Krimmel’s combined brief puts those conversations closer together.
The job is global. The useful information arrives one market at a time.
When the finished ship starts teaching
Krimmel applies similar attention to the product after launch. Six months after Norwegian Prima entered service, he spoke candidly about what guests loved, what surprised the team and what was still unresolved. The Ocean Boulevard outdoor deck was drawing people away from the pool deck. Indulge Food Hall was outperforming expectations. Even the theater’s physical transformation between shows had become a spectacle, with hundreds of guests standing around to watch.
Other lessons were less theatrical. The team learned about traffic flow and how people moved through the ship. A fixed menu in the main dining rooms had divided opinion. Krimmel said feedback was being reviewed every week and that the team had not rushed to a conclusion. The answer might be a change or the status quo. What mattered was allowing actual behavior to test the concept.
By March 2025, aboard Norwegian Aqua, the language was evolutionary. The new Prima Plus ship was larger than Prima and Viva, with more open space, a bigger main pool, new cabin choices and changes in entertainment and dining. Krimmel described it as the reference point for ships to come. Guest requests had become square footage, circulation, restaurant options and package benefits.
There is a useful humility in passenger flow. It cannot be solved by a slogan. People either move comfortably or they do not. They linger in the space designers expected, or gather somewhere nobody predicted to watch a theater rearrange itself. Observation turns the ship from a finished monument into a working draft.
A career built near the handoff
Krimmel’s story is less about a sudden transformation than the compounding value of adjacent jobs. The field seller hands insight to the marketing team. Marketing hands a promise to the traveler. The adviser turns that promise into a specific itinerary. The ship’s crew delivers it. The guest returns a verdict in choices, comments and future bookings.
His career has repeatedly placed him near those handoffs. That may explain why his public strategy resists neat departmental borders. A better dining layout supports the brand. A better air connection supports the sale. A regional team’s knowledge improves the global campaign. A travel adviser’s understanding of one client makes a booking engine more useful.
After more than two decades at NCL, Krimmel now operates at a scale far beyond his first North Texas territory. Yet the core practice still resembles good field work: pay attention to how people decide, notice the obstacle in front of them and bring the right parts of the company together to remove it.
The ship will always own the photograph. The quieter opportunity is to make the rest of the vacation feel as considered as the week at sea.