In late July, Hays Travel bought Victoria Travel Group to spearhead its expansion into the online cruise-selling market.
Speaking at the Clia Forum on Wednesday (17 December), Dame Irene revealed Hays Travel assessed "the relative benefits of acquiring one or more [cruise OTAs]".
"In my opinion the best way to learn about a business is to immerse yourself in it," she said.
Asked if she had plans to buy another OTA, Dame Irene said: "I think it's a possibility. At the moment, we're still learning but we're pretty fast learners. You need to get under the skin to understand what makes [a cruise OTA] compared to a retail shop."
Dame Irene said there were "stacks" of things Cruise.co.uk and Hays Travel had learnt from each other since the Sunderland-headquartered agency's acquisition of Cruise.co.uk was confirmed six months ago.
"I think Cruise.co.uk were far more sophisticated about the consideration period before a customer books than we were," she said.
Earlier this month, On the Beach vowed to "disrupt" the UK cruise market after it announced in November it was launching cruise-only holidays from three ocean lines.
However, Dame Irene insisted she didn't feel threatened by On the Beach's expansion into cruise. "OTAs have a different pricing models," she explained. "The opposite is true of running a retail shop versus an online travel agent. I have got both.
"The challenge is always on price and if you've got a price-led customer then OTAs are a challenge. Many of my customers are not price-led, they're experience-led. The cost base is different, OTAs go for volume, we go for quality of service."
The biggest area of growth
Reflecting on Hays' cruise sales during the agency's current financial year that runs until end of April 2026, Dame Irene said the growth of river business had been "huge".
"[River] is the biggest area of growth this financial year from May to the end of April," she added. "The movement in river cruise is larger than the growth in mainstream ocean cruise. That is obviously from a low base.
"We're doing particularly well with expedition cruising and our luxury market is getting better and better."
She noted how a change in approach following Hays Travel's retail conference in November had boosted cruise sales.
"It's important to take the low hanging fruit and build traction," she said. "Our head of cruise Catriona Parsons made the point at our conference this year that even if a customer comes in asking for a land-based holiday they must be offered a cruise. We did that and we were astonished with how many people switched.
"Customers are looking for better value. As the cost of holidays goes up, customers are looking for more things to do and better value in addition to the cruise. The airfare is the same whether they're doing a seven-night cruise and three days at the front and three days at the end. That's massive for us."
