APT has set its sights on growing its business through its travel agent partners by 30 per cent in 2024 after it saw a sharp uptick in wave period sales compared with last year

Speaking before the CLIA RiverView Conference, which takes place in Amsterdam from 11-13 March, the line’s head of sales UK and Europe Brad Bennetts sat down with Cruise Trade News to lay out his targets for 2024.

It comes after his newly bolstered sales team achieved 42 per cent growth in wave business compared with the same period in 2023.

You’re now overseeing APT’s largest ever UK sales team, with eight employees reporting into you. What was the reason behind this investment?

The remit when I joined was to look at what APT has done well in the past and what it needs to do differently. I identified a huge missed opportunity in trade and decided that we need more visibility and the right people on the ground to drive our brand over our competitors.

I wanted to expand the team, and invest in trade, which shows agents that we want to work with them. We now have resources dedicated to home working agents, we have four regional BDMs cross the UK and one in Ireland, as well as a national account manager. We ringfenced partners that we wanted to work with to help drive their business even further.

What impact has the larger team had so far?

We’ve seen a 42 per cent increase in sales during this period compared to the same time last year. We managed to attract more than 100 new agents to APT during the wave period who’ve never worked with us before. That really shows the bigger team are reaching more agents that haven’t worked with us in the past.

This year is going to be big for us. We have big growth targets, with 30 per cent being our goal for the year. We released our peaks campaign early, which went live before Christmas, and that put us in a really good position as we went into January and February, though we still have a mountain to climb.

What regions of the UK are you targeting from a trade perspective?

We’ve never had dedicated presence in Scotland so there’s an opportunity there. I specifically wanted someone in Scotland to drive that market and be the face of APT and that’s yielded fantastic results already. The Scottish region is up 74 per cent on previous years.

How is 2025 going so far?

Our 2025 sailings only went on sale a few weeks ago. Our two new ships are a premium product, which means they’re a higher price point. Currently, 2025 sales for that product are around 27 per cent up from same period last year.

A lot has been said recently about discounting in the river sector. Where do you stand on this issue?
It undervalues the product, where we should be selling at and what value for money demands. It’s been a challenge for agents because you’re selling some cruises at less than £1k and for seven nights, including flights, is a crazy price.

There’s always going to be element of distress as certain sailings will be less sold than others but as an industry, we need to identify where the brand is being damaged versus the benefit of filling cabins.

At APT, we have a lot of capacity but we’re able to value add. For example, instead of going to crazy low prices, we were able to offer free upgrades to balcony cabins, meaning we can demonstrate value. That’s what we’re doing for our 2025 campaign and that helps agents get behind the offering. You’re paying £1,900 but look at what you’re getting with that.