VIRGIN founder Richard Branson was in town this week to officially launch the Virgin Voyages brand in Australia (CW 13 Nov), dropping plenty of hints about a possible Australian deployment in the process. Preaching to the crowd from the top deck of Cruise Bar in Sydney, an excitable Branson indicated...
VIRGIN founder Richard Branson was in town this week to officially launch the Virgin Voyages brand in Australia (CW 13 Nov), dropping plenty of hints about a possible Australian deployment in the process.
Preaching to the crowd from the top deck of Cruise Bar in Sydney, an excitable Branson indicated he had been in conversations earlier in the day about the prospect of bringing one of his ships to Australian shores.
“We just saw the head of the Port Authority about maybe in a year, or two, or three, bringing one of our cruise ships down here and they showed us exactly where it was going to go and we thought, yep that’s pretty good,” Branson enthused.
Pouring some cold water on the speculation was Virgin Voyages Chief Commercial Officer Nirmal Saverimuttu, who told Cruise Weekly that Branson had a tendency to be vocal about future expansion strategy before plans had been firmed up.
“Richard’s been known to spill the beans here and there and get a little ahead of himself,” he said.
“The reality is Australia is a priority market for Virgin, it’s our third biggest market in the world, we have very high penetration here…in time I think that Australia could be a deployment market, we’re not really making that commitment right now but in time we will see.”
Pictured: Head of Int’l Sales Shane Riley with Saverimuttu.
