Clia celebrates cruise industry

Phil Nuttall, World Travel Holdings and Carol Kirkham were among the big winners at this year’s Clia UK & Ireland Cruise Excellence Awards.

Midcounties Co-op won the high street agent of the year while Carol Kirkham, owner of Kirkham Travel, won the cruise manager of the year. Sam Griffiths, of cruise.co.uk won the cruise advocate of the year award.

World Travel Holdings took home the online travel agent of the year award and travel agent business of the year award.

Adele Foster won the inaugural travel agent advisory council chairs award. Phil Nuttall, of Travel Village, and Michelle Russell, of Royal Caribbean, won the outstanding contribution to cruise award.

The rising star award was won by Cruise Direction, founded by Paul Frost, formerly of Jetline. The Travel Network Group won the cruise innovation award.

Janet Whittingham of Travel Councillors won the river cruise ambassador of the year.

It was also announced that there will be a special award dedicated to the late John Honeywell at the Cruise Journalism Awards.

Clia also revealed that it now has 4,183 agency members, with 10,767 users signed up to the website. Overall travel agent members have completed 87,839 modules.

During the Cruise Forum, held earlier in the day, Stuart Leven, the chairman of Clia and Royal Caribbean executive said that the industry needed to be better at vocalising the good work it was doing on environmental issues.

The cruise industry represents 0.1% of global emissions – out of shipping’s total of 2%. However, it is often seen as being worse because the size of some cruise ships makes for a more arresting picture.

Clia has also revealed that its Wave campaign will be #GetSetSail while next year’s Cruise Conference in Southampton will be on “Generation Cruise”.