P&O Aiming To Dominate Family Market?

I’m a big fan of P&O, sailed or sampled their ships a handful of times and always enjoyed it, but I’ve always seen them as more of an adults type of cruise.

Now however, with the success of ships such as Ventura and more recently Britannia, this British favourite looks to steal away some business from the big family cruise brands such as Royal Caribbean, especially from Southampton, of course the spiritual home for P&O, with some staggering family offers such as 3rd and 4th shares from just £1pp! Basically giving away those spaces for nothing.

OK so some of the really cheap offers are out of season, but in fairness to P&O the child fares for numerous voyages are I would say a fair bit lower than in recent years, making them a very attractive prospect for perhaps new-to-cruise guests.

Britannia had a bit of a shaky start to life, some regular P&O’ers disliking the design, with the central atrium lifts and stairs area attracting particularly negative comments. But for cruisers that had no concept of ship designs, i.e the new type of passenger, had no such comments due to no basis for comparison, so for them Britannia has done brilliantly well, and been great for the family.

This push on discounts coincides with the January peak season sales of course, which we hope will extend into February, but also seems quite timely with the impending saga that is Brexit, most people of course dreading that the country is going to fall into anarchy whilst we all hide in our underground bunkers eating tinned peaches for the next 5 years. OK, a bit extreme but you know what I mean if you watch the blasted news.

However it also fits in well with their 2020 ship launch, when the brand spanking new behemoth that is ‘Iona’ hits our shores too.

I’ve moaned before about the one trick pony itinerary that is Norway, and I wonder if they are not selling enough of the place to ensure the ship sails at capacity.

Naturally if you sell something cheap enough, people will buy it. Hell, I’ve even considered booking it for me, the wife and sprog, such is the decent value of it on many dates.

I think Iona is going to be something that we can certainly be proud of next year, and I really hope people book on it in their droves because it does look amazing. I just think P&O would have been better mixing up the itineraries a bit more, perhaps the odd Canaries or Med cruise, as well as Norway.

Who knows how it will go, all I can say is strike while the iron is hot people!

Thanks for reading, and as always, until next time….