Azamara Club Cruises is giving agents 11 chances this year to connect with its new brand positioning Stay Longer, Experience More.

A programme of artisan events around the UK & Ireland, one a month for the entire year, will expose agents to the line’s enhanced brand positioning, which focuses on its destination programme.

A new umbrella land programme called Cruise Global, Connect Local has 13 sub categories including Cruise Global, Bike Local; Cruise Global, Golf Local; Cruise Global, Taste Local; and even Cruise Global, Stay Local, with offerings including a two-day excursion to the desert in Oman, sleeping in luxurious Bedouin-style tents.

Trade events will be aligned to these themes, with an Eco Local event taking place at Kew Gardens on February 23, a Stay Local event taking place at Pig on the Beach in Dorset on April 18, and Golf Local event at Gleneagles golf course in Scotland on September 28.

Richard Twynam, managing director UK & Ireland, Azamara Club Cruises told Cruise Trade News: “A year-round programme of monthly events for the trade is a big commitment from a very small cruise line. We’ve budgeted for roughly 12 agents per event. We’ll be inviting agents we know and some we don’t know, who live close to the areas in question, and it’ll allow us to talk to them about destination immersion.”

There is no set criteria for allocating places, but he did encourage agents who were keen to participate to email him or their regional sales rep to express interest.

Cruise Global, Connect Local is one of three pillars to the new brand positioning. A second pillar emphasises the boutique nature of Azamara’s floating hotels, and a third pillar involves scheduling increasingly immersive itineraries that focus on just one country.

The 2018 programme, launched in autumn 2015, has 12 country-intensive voyages, which include the likes of Costa Rica, Mexico, Croatia, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Italy. The Australia voyage, for example, will visit smaller ports such as Broome, Exmouth, Fremantle and Albany, all maiden ports of call.

Twynam explained: “Cabotage rules mean some country-intensive voyages have to start or end in a different country – our New Zealand intensive voyage, for example, ends in Sydney – but they will offer a stunning level of depth of destination immersion.”

He added: “In 2019, we will have a country-intensive itinerary focusing on Japan, which is really hot right now, but there is a perception that it’s expensive to do a land tour there.”

The 2019 programme, which is due to launch in the final week of March, will have even more of these country-intensive voyages, and a country-intensive brochure will follow.

“Our 2017-2018 programme delivers experiences in 200+ ports worldwide, 35 of which are maiden ports, and 2018-19 will have our highest ever number of maiden ports of call,” said Twynam.

“Our country-intensive voyages are a big step change and we think other lines will follow. Lots of lines say they deliver on destination, but you have to be able to back that up, and an events programme like our AzAmazing evenings, in 70 countries, is very hard to replicate,” said Twynam.