VOICE OF LUXURY
VOICE LUXURY Ů Chris Prelog president, Windstar Cruises
The boss of the small-ship line shares details of Windstar’s recovery and ambitions for the UK market. Erica Bush reports
Q. How has 2022 been for Windstar? We are super excited to be back in operation. All six ships are running and doing really well. We have also eased our Covid restrictions and filled our ships with crew – more than 90% of our crew returned [post-Covid]. At the same time, we have moved our head office from Seattle to Miami and we are announcing new deployments, so it’s busy but it’s a good busy. We’ve spent the last few months building momentum and business is performing very well. Currently, we’re taking on more bookings than in 2019.
Q. What is currently selling well? We’re seeing a couple of trends for the Med and the Greek islands – they’re doing really well and we’ve seen lots of bookings there. We’ve also seen a substantial increase in demand for French Polynesia. We have a ship permanently in Tahiti and that bucket-list destination is selling well, as is the Caribbean.
Q. What other trends are emerging post-pandemic? First of all, we’re seeing more new-to-brand guests come to us seeking smaller ships. What we’re trying to do is offer choice, where you book the cruise the way you want it. For example, do you want all-inclusive or à la carte? Do you want an all-sail ship or do you want an all-suite ship? Where do you want to go? We have a really wide variety of offerings and we are seeing that attract guests from different backgrounds. We’ve also seen a good uptake on longer voyages. Next year, we have our 85-day Grand European Bucket List Adventure cruise. It’s 22 countries and you touch a lot of the key and smaller ports, so that has taken some interest. Guests like to spend a little bit more time away now than before and [they want to] be a bit slower because everyone is catching up on missed vacations.
Q. How are you supporting UK agents? We have just renewed our partnership with The Cruise Line [our general sales agent] and we’re super excited about that. We also
90 ASPIRE SEPTEMBER 2022
aspiretravelclub.co.uk
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