The river cruise and escorted touring specialist has built strong agent relationships since 2012 when it first started selling through the trade.
In 2019, Riviera’s trade sales accounted for 15% of its overall business. However, that figure has now increased to 25%. Riviera plans to double its business via the trade as it targets 200,000 passengers by 2030.
To help widen distribution, Riviera has recruited Amanda Docherty as its first key account manager for homeworkers, and plans to recruit another key account manager soon.
Earlier this year, Chris McCloskey and Lloyd Morris joined the business as key account managers, supporting agents across the UK and Ireland.
Trading director Stuart Milan said: “We’re doing a huge push with regards to trade distribution. In three weeks’ time, we will have seven in the on-the-road trade team. We’re doing a lot to support this trade distribution push.
“We never really pushed into Scotland and Ireland, and now we’ve got this homeworker position filled, Amanda Docherty will support agencies like Travel Counsellors, Holidaysplease and InteleTravel.”
He added: “Our trade team is the biggest team in terms of totality that we’ve ever had. We’re now set to use all of our resources to push across the markets. There’s a lot of opportunity within the trade.”
Milan also noted how the agent reservations team had jumped from four to six in the past few months.
He revealed Riviera has made 100 fam trip places available to the trade across river cruise and touring, and hinted a day-trip programme may also be put together.
“We want to give agents that full experience,” Milan continued. “Some places will be taken up by competition winners and some will go out to key partners.”
On river cruise, Milan said lines can “prosper” in the next 12 to 18 months as the wider travel industry “wakes up” to the opportunities within the river cruise sector.
“We’ve not reached the potential of river cruise,” he added. “There’s a huge amount of opportunity in river.”
However, he warned lines about the dangers of discounting, stressing: “It does make our jobs more difficult when someone is shouting about a percentage off which suggests that the customer is getting a higher value product for less which is not necessarily the case.”
Riviera, he said, does “not inflate pricing and then discount”. “We always have our 125% price promise when we do promotional activity,” he explained.
