No jettisoning of Cunard lines

Your story about Cunard (MW October 20) includes inaccuracies and your headline is misleading.

Cunard has no intention of “ditching” any famous cruise line brand names and all of our eight ships will continue to carry their name proudly. In fact, we are enhancing individual ship names while clearly guaranteeing that the company name, Cunard, is not diluted. What we are doing is ensuring each vessel has a distinctive name, ie Queen Elizabeth 2, the Royal Viking Sun.

We had developed sub-branding in the past, which grouped a number of vessels under the Cunard Royal Viking umbrella and this has now been disbanded. There was a sub-brand known as Cunard Crown, which will no longer be used as several ships under that brand have been disposed of. The two remaining ships, the Cunard Countess and the Cunard Dynasty, will continue to trade under the Cunard umbrella.

It is inaccurate to suggest that promotional activity in the form of direct mail, advertising and public relations will begin in the new year through Bates USA.

We will continue to use the UK Bates agency for advertising, and we use a number of different agencies for direct mail. The rebranding strategy has been developed by Strattons. Cunard has a public relations manager in the UK and our UK public relations consultant is Ann Scott Associates.

Peter J Bates

Cunard

New York