Around 1,240 travel agents are expected to join a Princess ship visit in UK and Irish ports such as Southampton, Greenock, Liverpool, Belfast and Dublin this year. As ship visits ramp up, McKechnie, Princess’s Sales Director for the UK and Europe, delivered a warning to travel agents.

“I’ve been fortunate to work across multiple cruise brands and sadly agents not showing up has always happened,” she said. “At Princess, we have to oversell our ship visits to compensate for drop-outs.”

McKechnie said “sometimes” agents will not contact Princess at all to give a reason for failing to show up. “There are occasions where we do not hear anything from the agent,” she added. "Ship visits are one of the many things that Princess does incredibly well.”

Princess recently added new type of educational to promote its Mediterranean product as well as inspire agents.

Starting this week. Carnival Corporation brand has flown agents out to Naples with further events planned in La Spezia (29 June-1 July), and Marseille (2-4 July) as part of its VIP Destination Experience initiative.

Experiences are split between the ship and destination, with agents dining in restaurants onboard such as Crown Grill and Sabatini’s or they can enjoy a wine tasting on land or watch the sunset from the beach.

Agents invited on the trip will have lunch onboard Enchanted Princess and spend time in the port during each visit. “It will be like a ship visit, but the agents are not staying onboard,” she said. “They will get to see the ship itself.”

To secure a place on one of the three trips, agents needed to make a booking in January and fill out an online form.

Princess has invited 30 agents on these Destination Experiences and a further 83 on fam trips this year. The line’s key destinations are the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Alaska, Asia and the US West Coast.

“We have spoken a lot about how our focus is not just ex-UK and that’s resonating now,” McKechnie added. “This has been our focus since I joined in 2024.”