Steve Williams said that he wanted to take a “collaborative” approach to dealing with key agent partners and was keen to develop a scheme that worked differently to previous models.

“I don’t think a blanket scheme is necessarily right for the trade. Some people like it but equally the blanket approach doesn’t work for all of our trade partners,” he told TTG.

“Some like to have schemes but others want exclusive control of how they sell their business. I would sooner take a collaborative approach with each partner to find out what works for them best,” he added.

Meanwhile, Williams revealed MSC was in the process of reviewing its commission structure.

“It will be [developed] through conversations with individual partners and working with a model that has the flexibility to play to different partners’ strengths that I am looking at,” he said.

“It won’t be a blanket approach. But it’s fair to say that within the mainstream operators, MSC is the richest partner to do business with.”

Despite only being with MSC for a short time, Williams said he was confident the cruise line would have plenty of agent advocates.

“There are agents out there that get us and are doing a good job with the consumers. There are so many opportunities to expand distribution. There are also many agents who aren’t selling MSC that I can go and talk to; hopefully I can open doors.”