Vikki Coffey remembers the exact moment she had the lightbulb moment which put her on the path to creating a £3 million cruise business.
Not Just Travel (NJT) agent Coffey was in a meeting onboard Norwegian Prima during the agency's first-ever Seminar at Sea in September 2022 when her mind wandered to an evening out with her partner Frank Keoghan.
The couple had gone to watch what Coffey describes as "an adult pantomime" at a theatre in Hull. The show, Vampires Rock – Ghost Train, had been created by Steve Steinman and was right up her rock-loving partner's street, so Coffey bought tickets for his birthday.
And while the couple had a "brilliant evening" at the show, neither of them thought much more of it at the time. Seven months later, though, during a training session onboard Prima, the penny dropped in Coffey's mind.
"The show was so well produced," she recalls. "I thought it would do really well on a cruise ship. I thought I'd be able to get a few people to come along."
At the time, Coffey had only just launched her homeworking business with NJT, but she decided to raise the idea with NJT's senior cruise business development manager Duncan Croucher.
'All sorts of things going through my head'
While Croucher put in some calls, Coffey decided to make some enquiries of her own. Shortly after her lightbulb moment, Coffey looked up Steinman's Facebook page, which at the time had 24,000 followers.
"I thought I would send him a message, saying how good his show was," she explains. "I said something like, ‘I came to see your show in February, it blew me away. I was just wondering if you'd thought about putting your show on a cruise line?’.
"I just left it at that. I did not leave my name, my telephone number or email. I thought my message would just get buried under all the others he receives from fans."
However, later that night, Coffey's phone pinged. "It was a text from Steve," she says. "His exact words were, ‘no, but what have you got in mind?’. I didn’t know whether to answer then or leave it until tomorrow. There were all sorts of things going through my head.
"My partner woke up and said, ‘are you ok?’, to which I said, 'do I look ok?'"
Enter Steve Steinman, the 'pied piper'
After a fitful night's sleep, Coffey replied to Steinman in the morning. She didn't know it, but it was to be the start of a business relationship which has so far attracted hundreds of new-to-cruise passengers, who also happen to love rock music, to MSC Cruises.
So far, Coffey and Steinman have promoted two cruises – one four-night cruise in September 2024, with a second due to depart almost two years later in September this year.
The seven-night sailing – called the Anything For Love Cruise 2026 – onboard MSC Virtuosa will depart Southampton sailing to La Rochelle, Bilbao, La Coruna and Cherbourg.
"I call Steve 'the pied piper'. Wherever he goes, his fans will follow," Coffey says. "On the first cruise, 80% of the passengers I had booked had never been on cruise before. But because Steve was on stage and performing, they were going to go."
Unsurprisingly, given how excited Steinman's fans were to watch their hero perform in a different setting to the one they were accustomed to, they had an "awful lot of questions" for Coffey and the in-house NJT team tasked with supporting the sales operation.
"I had the full support of head office," Coffey continues. "Everybody knew who Steve Steinman was and who Vikki Coffey was. But I felt like I was in a gold fish bowl – everybody knew me, but I knew no one!"
MSC Cruises allocated 900 cabins to Coffey for the first cruise she and Steinman promoted. And although those cabins with restricted views were ultimately handed back to the cruise line, Coffey still had to shift more than 800 cabins in a matter of months.
Coffey must sell the same number of cabins before 5 September when the Anything For Love Cruise departs, but having being so successful first time around, she is quietly confident about repeating the success.
"It is much easier second time around because the systems are all in place," she says. "In the first two weeks of it going on sale, 350 cabins went, which was a massive achievement.
"We’re pretty confident we can sell out, or at least get close to selling out. Steve works his Facebook page really well. He now has something like 34,000 followers. We advertise through that and we put a Facebook boost in. When we do a boost, we get a big surge in people wanting to book."
Wave, and the year ahead
What would happen if Coffey failed to sell the entire allocation? For a relatively new homeworker trying to forge a career in travel, any serious financial punishment could kill off her business.
"Because we're doing a longer cruise second time around, the costings are a lot higher. This cruise can generate £2.6 million. It’s a longer cruise so it costs more than the first one," explains Coffey. "Not Just Travel have helped me with insurance.
"We're Abta-bonded anyway, but if something goes badly wrong, like Steve can't turn up, then we do have insurance in place. We’ve got 900 cabins again and we are well past half way now. Some of the fans are lucky to have the same cabin they had last time by booking early!"
Now wave season is well under way, Coffey is hopeful of edging closer to selling out. "Steve is very hands on," she continues. "There’s a lot of contact over WhatsApp – more or less daily. It’s not a husband-and-wife sort of thing, but we do blow hot and cold on things – but we always patch things up. It definitely keeps me busy.
"I’ve never had a 9-5 job so I’ve always worked independently and done weekend work. I work seven days a week. Peaks is going to be a challenge because we’ve got some cabins to sell."
