But despite the prolonged shutdown, crippling uncertainty and barrage of negative publicity for cruise, the Cruise118 co-founder felt even more determined to make his comeback with a new retail venture.
“I wanted to come back in and make a real difference,” he tells TTG. “I’ve been in cruise since 1998, I’m so passionate about it… yes there have been some isolated [Covid] incidents but I’ve found a lot of the criticism hard to take.
“Seeing former colleagues treated so negatively made me even hungrier to come back, and I decided to pull things forward and launch now.”
Cole’s new brand – Panache Cruises – officially opens its call centre phone lines for business today (6 July), offering “elite” ocean, river and expedition lines alongside luxury yacht cruising with a team of “cruise connoisseurs” on hand to deal with clients’ every whim.
In spite of the strange tides the industry finds itself in, Cole has his eyes on calmer waters.
“Panache is a long-term venture and I see us being around in 10, 15, 20 years time. We’ll get over these initial few months – whether it’s six or 12 months – and we’ll do what we have to do to position ourselves as being one of the very best UK cruise retailers.”
A bold aspiration amid turbulent times, but coming from someone with a proven track record of doing just that – you wouldn’t bet against him.
The idea to create Panache appears to have been bubbling away discretely in Cole’s psyche since he departed World Travel Holdings in March 2018.
During the beginnings of a new career in property development and construction, he admits “I didn’t necessarily see myself coming back”, but his family’s enduring love of holidays on the ocean – they’ve taken three cruises since he left – and one eye on industry issues meant he was primed to jump back in.
“I was never really that far away and once I started signing up for industry news alerts again – there was this magnetic force that started to pull me back in,” he recalls.
When his non-compete agreement with WTH concluded at the end of 2019, Cole set to work building his next business, and in spite of the current headwinds he’s upbeat about the outlook.
“We actually think it’s a positive time to start. Cruising is about to return in the coming months, the major cruise lines will resume later this year and then things can build back to somewhere near full capacity in 2021. People may not necessarily be looking to cruise in the next couple of months but they will into 2021 and 2022."
Since news of his return broke in May, Cole has been busy readying Panache to enter the marketplace. “Panache comes from my 23 years of experience in the cruise industry,” he says, promising the agency will provide “front-to-back-end personalised service”.
As part of the experience, clients will be allocated their own “connoisseur”, “who will be with you from the moment you book to when come back from your cruise holiday – they’ll deal with absolutely everything”.
“They’ll get to know you, they will book everything and take care of all your needs – basically nothing is too much trouble for us.”
In its drive for more personalised service, Panache will do away with “irritating” Interactive voice response (IVR) phone systems “press one for this or press two for that,” Cole says, instead using “intelligent routing” to place the caller with their dedicated connoisseur.
“We’ll use technology but we’ll use it to aid customer service and not replace it. It’s all about us speaking to customers and giving them that high-end customer service.”
Launching with a team of “about half a dozen”, Cole will look to expand Panache’s connoisseur department “over the next few months” and along the way offer roles to “displaced” staff made redundant amid the pandemic.
Panache’s total team of around 15 employees will also eventually move into an office in Bolton. “Hopefully that will be Q1/Q2 next year,” Cole predicts.
An important part of Cole’s pre-launch work has been speaking with the agency’s growing database to gauge feelings on getting back onboard.
Consumers seems to fall into three distinct camps: ardent cruisers, wary returners, and the new to cruise market, which Cole admits will be “much harder to convert” to trying a cruise post-Covid.
To aid Panache’s efforts, Cole has recruited Blue singer and cruise enthusiast Duncan James, to act as a brand ambassador and help consumer confidence – with more famous faces set to be signed up over the coming months.
“He’s a great character and mad keen on cruising,” Cole tells me. “Duncan will be able to share his experiences and get across what it’s actually like on ships when we start sailing again.”
“We want people to see cruising is the most innovative product in travel, and when they come back, cruises will be the safest form of travel you can do. Cruise lines look after the guests and look after their crew – that’s the message we want to get across to customers.”
Its focus on the luxury sector could also help Panache – with lines already boasting higher space ratios and fewer passengers potentially least impacted by potential future social distancing policies.
Although Cole is under no illusions of the challenges ahead and is candid about the financing he’s put in place “for the next 18-24 months even if we didn’t do any bookings whatsoever”.
“We have to be quite realistic with our expectations,” he says. “Clearly this [Covid] is the biggest issue that cruising and travel and the world has ever faced.
“The thing that I take from my cruise experience is that [the industry] is exceptionally innovative, exceptionally creative and exceptionally determined.
“Every time there has been a barrier thrown in the way – albeit smaller obstacles than now – like 9/11, the ash cloud, the sinking of Costa Concordia – the cruise industry has always bounced back – and kicked on. I think that will absolutely happen this time around.
“It’s just going to take a lot longer. It might take us a couple of years – if not longer to get back to the levels we were at last year. But the industry is so dynamic and innovative that people will rally around and make things happen.”
