Luxury river cruise line Uniworld has reported an uplift in ‘no-fly’ bookings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
UK managing director Chris Townson said the brand had worked hard to increase its communication around no-fly options during the pandemic. He said as a result, bookings were coming through and he’d seen a “big uplift” in bookings for sailings where clients didn’t have to fly to reach their embarkation point.
Townson said the line was “following the trend” and as a result had introduced a self-drive itinerary to France.
“People are definitely searching on a much bigger scale over the last three to four weeks, people are booking on a much bigger scale too and that no-fly trend is something that we’re developing.
“We also just introduced a self-drive to France. If you look at those who drive down to France in their own cars – we’re introducing that on a river cruise basis so people can drive down, maybe stopover en route. They drive to our ship, check in with all the luggage and get on board.”
He said the line was arranging pre-booked car parks to ensure it was an easy process for guests.
Speaking on a Clia cruise webcast with Travel Weekly editor in chief Lucy Huxley, he said these were among the “green shoots” the line had seen recently.
He said the line had also seen a “huge surge of enquiries” after a recent repeat of an episode of Cruising with Jane McDonald was aired.
Townson said they weren’t aware it was being shown again but it caused them to “jump into action straight away”.
“We worked with our partners, they went out to the databases, and no word of a lie, it literally just went crazy with a massive surge in terms of website enquiries and search. We’re talking about a huge amount of bookings that came through as a net result of that.”
