Luxury cruise line Silversea is working with 25% more agents in the UK than it was pre-pandemic, but its president believes the line still isn’t penetrating the market enough.
Speaking on the shakedown cruise for new vessel Silver Nova, Barbara Muckermann put out a “call to arms” for more UK agents to equip themselves with the knowledge to sell Silversea.
She described the UK market as “a really steady and consistent performer” but stressed that there was potential for growth fuelled by a desire to widen the net and work with more agents.
More: Agents urged to put Silver Nova ‘on shopping lists’ of high value clients
Muckermann said the brand couldn’t “live without growth” from trade, its “primary distribution channel”, highlighting that the brand’s capacity has grown by 56% since the start of the pandemic with the delivery of five ships since 2020. Capacity will grow by an additional 17% next year with the addition of Nova’s sister ship Silver Ray, and despite Silver Explorer leaving the fleet.
She said: “We need help from more agents to spread the love about this amazing ship and product. We believe there is still a lot of growth in the distribution.
“If I’m looking at the penetration numbers, I’m not happy where we are, we should have more agents selling our amazing products and that’s an opportunity for us.
“The UK has concentrated a lot from our sales perspective and we have a number of partners who are growing a lot and maybe we see a little less new partners coming in. My call to arms would be to come and let us know what we can do to help you start to sell this product. It’s a great product.”
The UK sales team has gained two team members focussing on business development and scouting our new agents for the line to work with.
Peter Shanks, Silversea’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, said: “[Silver Nova] will widen our net to an extent. The cruise specialists are enormously dear to us but so far this year 50% of our business has been new to Silversea and we are trading with 25% more travel agents than we were in 2019. We have worked really hard at it.”