Virgin Voyages’ associate vice-president of international sales has told Cruise Trade News that UK sales are ahead of target, as the line officially unveiled Scarlet Lady to media and trade partners in Dover.

The first ship in Virgin Voyages four-strong fleet opened its doors for the first time over the weekend (21 February).

Speaking on board Scarlet Lady, Shane Riley said: “Our sales have exceeded expectations. We had a share that we thought the UK would deliver and that was between 10-15 per cent, but we’ve been exceeding that comfortably.

“The UK was expected to really come to the party for the Mediterranean and that will start to kick in now as we get through to spring where people start thinking ‘right, what’s my summer holiday next year’.

“When I joined Virgin Voyages we thought the UK was going to be a smaller piece of the pie than it has turned out to be.

“That’s why we took on a team on the UK – the original plan was that I wouldn’t get a team until the end of this year. We got a team almost a year earlier than planned.”

Virgin Voyages has also announced the launch of Voyage Store, a dedicated packaging platform for travel agents, launched in response to agent feedback.

“People [told us they] wanted to sell Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Voyages in one place, so the first step was our partnership with Virgin Atlantic Flightstore.

“From that we realised this it was something bigger than we perhaps thought it was going to be, so that’s why we’ve launched Voyage Store because we can run it on our own branding.”

Virgin Voyages is also planning to to fam trips later in the year, including do the line’s private Beach Club at Bimini.

“The feedback that we get is people really now wanting to see the product,” added Riley. “I think we had a period of people understanding the brand and everything we do, but now we’ve got to the moment when people really want to see it.

“We’ll do some fam trips later this year in the Caribbean, so we’ll take people down to Bimini.”