Karen Bancroft, travel manager at West Yorkshire-based Keir Woodward Travel, secured the £27,000 Princess Cruises booking after a regular customer opted to celebrate milestones missed because of the Covid-19 pandemic with her family instead of her usual summer getaway.

"The booking started off small, just a couple of weeks in the sun – nice and cheap and cheerful, as they usually do, but every booking is a good booking as far as we’re concerned,” Bancroft told TTG. 

"However, she was part of much larger family, and as they had missed birthdays and other occasions during Covid, they thought it would be a good idea for all of them to travel.

"They bounced a few ideas around, and being on a cruise ship, where they could be all together and have an experience, was the way they went and it turned out to be a fantastic trip."

Bancroft said the holiday was financed by the grandparents of the family – a key trend the agency has seen post-pandemic when it comes to big multigenerational bookings. 

She added the agency’s local market has been "very resilient" to uncertainties surrounding the cost of living crisis in the UK, but said the high street firm will "remain vigilant" to potential threats in the future.  

The booking came as part of a trial period of The Advantage Travel Partnership’s in-house operator’s new range of fly-stay and cruise packages.

Bancroft said Advantage Holidays and Cruise’s new packages helped her relay "crucial" pre-boarding information to the guests, such as testing regulations, vaccine rules and local guidelines.

Advantage – of which Keir Woodward Travel is a member – told TTG of further plans to help members capitalise on the cruise industry’s bounceback from the pandemic with a turn-of-year marketing push. 

The association’s head of operations Lee Ainsworth said the organisation had identified "a massive opportunity" for agents to make the most of an increase in demand for cruise holidays. 

"We are investing as much as we can to ensure our members can take advantage of the bounceback of cruise," he added.

"We have put in place a range of initiatives, such as our partnership with Clia, which is designed around ensuring every member of staff within a branch has access to top-level knowledge and training."

The partnership also appointed Jonny Peat as cruise commercial manager earlier this year in a bid to support its cruise line partners and offer further advice to members to help them boost their cruise sales.