Is it time P&O moved out of Southampton?

I have been thinking about this for a while to be honest, and over the years this has been mentioned to me by customers and colleagues alike.  But should P&O cruises look to move out of Southampton and look at other regional ports around the country?

P&O are in a minority in the grand scale of cruise lines, in that you will normally find cruise lines selling their cruises in a variety of countries, whereas P&O only sell through the British market and style themselves as the British cruise line, which works extremely well for them.  Why then, if I would like a P&O cruise from the UK, do I have to travel to Southampton to do so.  I myself am in the North East, and for me to get to Southampton it means either a flight down with Flybe or a coach/car journey that has a travel time that I wouldn’t even like to think about!  And people in Scotland have even further to travel if this is something that they would like to consider.

P&O will shortly be releasing their new itineraries for 2018 in September, 6 months earlier than they normally would, and some of the reasoning behind this is that they want to have the cruises available for people to purchase for a longer period so they have more time to sell them.  My thoughts on this would be; rather than have their cruises on sale for longer why not look at basing their ships from other ports than Southampton, as a lot of people are put off by the travel time in the North and beyond and the country doesn’t end in the Midlands.

We have a number of ports in the North that could be suitable for them to base even one of the smaller ships like Arcadia or Aurora, such as the Port of Tyne in Newcastle, Liverpool which was the historic home of Cunard or even Leith in Edinburgh.  I know from these ports we have Cruise and Maritime and Fred Olsen cruises departing and Thomson Cruises from 2017 which is fantastic.  But I do think it is about time that the UK cruise market leader started looking outside the metaphorical box of Southampton to attract customers, and looked to other parts of the country where I think they would be surprised at the response and number of bookings they would get if they considered this.  It would also give people the chance to experience P&O cruises in a more accessible way from a local port, which then may lead them to take the trek to Southampton more freely.

What do you think?  Do you think P&O should stay in Southampton or is it about time they started at looking at other options?