Ambience is set to sail its maiden voyage from Tilbury on Wednesday (20 April) after a renaming ceremony on Tuesday, with the ship’s godmother and Olympic gold medallist Sally Gunnell.

Speaking to TTG onboard, chief executive Christian Verhounig said the line had shown its “strong belief in the future of UK cruising” having launched at the start of January 2021 and already purchased a second vessel – Ambition – before launching its first.

The 1,400-guest Ambience will sail 31 ex-UK cruises through to May 2023 and was “already very well sold”, according to Verhounig – with 50% of the programme “gone in the first three months of sales”.

“We bought a second ship before the first had launched and I think that says a lot about how we’re feeling – we named her Ambition so everyone got the message,” he said.

Ambition will launch in March and, in addition to Tilbury, offer a summer programme of regional departures from ports including Newcastle, Dundee, Belfast, Liverpool, Bristol and Falmouth.

The ship’s full programme of itineraries will go on sale from Q2 this year, with Verhounig teasing some “interesting surprises” in destinations featured.

“She’s classical, traditional and has a very big space-to-guest ratio,” said Verhounig, adding how the line’s expansion into regional departures would “bring very helpful business” to agents. 

More than half of Ambassador’s sales currently comes through the trade, according to Verhounig, who said he anticipated a “natural growth” in the company’s trade team as Ambition came into service. 

When asked about future expansion and the potential of growing Ambassador’s fleet, Verhounig ruled out the possibility of new-build projects and confirmed future ship acquisitions were in the company’s plans.

“It needs to make sense for the business and, being private equity-funded, there are plans going into the future but it’s not a number of ships in a number of years, there needs to be healthy growth,” he said.

“There are many we are interested in [but] it’s not something we are actively looking at at the moment but I’m sure we will find the right partners.”