In fact, Jonny Peat, the Advantage Travel Partnership's Director of Cruise, believes more Advantage members are proactively looking to sell cruise owing the current geopolitical climate, with most capacity coming to market.

Speaking on Monday (11 May) ahead of the consortium's 2026 conference in Madrid, Peat highlighted the fact guests travelling on ex-UK roundtrip cruises are not subject to the EU's new biometric border checks as another selling point for the sector.

Peat also revealed Advantage's in-house cruise community, which was rebranded from Cruise Champions to Latitude in October 2022, has grown from around 140 members to nearly 600 over the past three years.

"Cruise is doing really well," said Peat. Asked if more agents were looking to up their cruise sales, or start selling the sector for the first time, Peat added: "That is definitely a thing."

Cruise 'over-indexing'

The recent hantavirus outbreak onboard Oceanwide Expeditions' ship MV Hondius has dominated news bulletins for the past week, forcing the World Health Organisation to publicly come out and play down any concerns the current cases could trigger the start of another pandemic.

"So far, no effect [on sales]," said Peat. "We're keeping an eye on that. Obviously, it has really hit the news, but so far, it's not affected sales. We've spoken to multiple members, and they are not seeing clients proactively asking any questions about it. Right now, that isn't a concern, if you like."

Peat said cruise has "over-indexed" compared with other sectors and the wider market during the conflict in the Middle East. "Ex-UK – Southampton, Liverpool, regional departures – have done really well.

"It's also about the European ports – Barcelona, Venice, Rome – it just feels like it's that little bit closer to home. So ocean cruising is holding its own."

The conflict in the Middle East is seeing modest amounts of capacity flow back into the market, Peat revealed, predominantly due to Americans cancelling their plans.

"We're not seeing massive cancellations, as expected, but there is some availability dropping back into the market for the second and third quarters. So the prices have held very well. But it does mean there is availability for cruise where perhaps there wouldn't be quite so much for Q2/Q3.

"Yes, there are less Americans coming to Europe, but not as much as you'd think. You'd think the Americans would really cancel in droves, but that's not what's being reported, but it does give us a proportion [of capacity] that wasn't available.

"It was a very early booking curve for cruise into summer 2026, so when the availability does come back, it's being snapped up. It all goes back to that value piece. It's a bit of a no-brainer."

'Chasing the sun'

Peat said that while Advantage hadn't proactively pushed out any messaging about roundtrip UK cruises not being subject to the new EU Entry-Exit System, it was an opportunity to promote a "seamless" way to travel with there being no airports or border checks to clear.

"Perhaps the ones that are really thinking about the most seamless way to travel are looking a bit more closely at UK roundtrips where they maybe wouldn't have done once upon a time," said Peat.

"You can get as far as the western Med on a cruise out of the UK – 14 nights, chase the sun, Norwegian fjords are very popular, we're seeing round the UK cruising becoming increasingly popular. I just think it's a great holiday choice that perhaps hadn't been considered, and now is one that is less peripheral and is a definite consideration.

"So we're proactively asking our members to put those kind of options into consideration, and they're [clients] biting."

'Not scratched the surface'

Advantage Commercial Director John Sullivan added: "We've worked really hard to bring agents. Cruise used to be such a niche thing – you were either in the cruise club or you weren't. A lot of members thought they'd missed it. So Jonny has worked really hard to bring those people into the cruise fold that weren't in it previously.

"Latitude, our cruise community, at one point, we had 140-odd members in that. We're now up to just shy of 600."

Peat added Advantage was also conscious of not presenting cruise as a standalone, separate holiday choice and more as just another option.

He also stressed there was huge potential for further growth. "Cruise beds globally is just shy of about 3% of overall global hotel beds so that really just goes to show we've really not scratched the surface on cruise."