Morgan, who previously worked under Grimley as Riviera’s key account manager, returns to the UK market after a year as the escorted touring and river cruise specialist’s international sales and marketing manager covering the US and Australia.

"We established a really strong sales channel in those overseas markets," said Morgan, who will continue to look after its Australian business, "but the lure of coming back to work with agents in the UK again was too much not to take."

He brings with him a new member of Riviera’s expanded agency sales team, Gina Squirrel, who will be based at the operator’s head office in Burton-on-Trent and look after areas such as trade marketing and social media.

"Gina is a brilliant addition to the team and we’ve worked together this past year on international," Morgan said. "When I was previously part of the UK team we were a smaller outfit, now we’re a much larger team and looking to expand even further."

Morgan also praised Grimley for the "fantastic job" he had done during his tenure as Riviera’s head of agency sales, which most prominently involved introducing the company to the trade after its long history of selling direct.

Grimley left Riviera earlier this year after six years to become director of trade sales for Scenic Group UK.

Morgan said it was now up to him and his Riviera team to "take things to the next level" and cited a "big push" for the brand’s escorting touring product for 2019 and a desire to host more fam trips.

"I think a lot of agents still just think of Riviera as a river cruise line, and we’ve grown that business really well, but we’re a market leader in escorted touring too so we’ve got big plans to push that further," he said.