60 seconds with...Tom Andrews, sales director for the UK and EMEA, Seabourn

Q. How has the year started for Seabourn?

It’s been positive. We’re in a pretty well-booked position for 2025 and, year on year, 2026 is way ahead of forward bookings for 2025 this time last year. We’re fairly comfortable with where we are in terms of business, but there are still some pockets of opportunity in Q3 and Q4 of this year, which is great. We’ve found that nice balance between how well booked we are in terms of the stock for the ‘in year’, versus what we’re looking at next year. Our main challenge is to keep driving the volume that we are seeing, but keeping price points where they are, trying to push them on where appropriate, and making sure we’re filling our ships. Expedition is incredibly well sold for 2025 with very small pockets [of availability]; we’re looking at 2026 and 2027 in due course too.

Q. Tell us a bit about your trade strategy. 

We are trying to work more closely with certain travel agents in terms of how strategic we are. That’s still a learning curve for me; I’m just understanding which agents are best placed to do which jobs for us – it’s not a one size fits all. Every agency has its strengths and it’s up to us to identify what those strengths are for Seabourn. 

Q. What can the trade expect from this approach?

We’ll be looking at what we can do to make us tailored towards and focused on every agent in a way that will work best holistically for us and, ultimately, our agent partners. I’d like to be more data-driven and data-orientated, and I’d like us to step back a bit and look at what we can do longer term. There’s a load of numbers and insight data within the Carnival brands, and it’s about making sure we’re using that to our advantage.

Credits: Steve Dunlop; Matthew Burch