Victory for Victoria…..

The company was founded in 1984 by Andrew Gardner (current Chairman) and first opened its doors in August 1984 in a small village Barnt Green with only Andrew and two other employees. The company was named after Andrew’s daughter Victoria and the aim was to become a successful travel agent selling all kinds of holidays.

The very first booking was a cruise on the QE2, which came as a surprise, but jolted Andrew into action to research and explore the possibilities of cruising. He decided to go to London and visit all cruise lines, literally knocking on their doors offering his business.

He succeeded and the company started selling cruises.

Soon they got appointed by Birmingham Post and Mail to handle all their Reader Offers holidays. It was a massive success and allowed Andrew to contact and visit all major newspapers and magazines across England and Scotland.

In 1988 the company expanded and moved to new larger premises on the high street in Barnt Green, now with 8 employees, including Andrew’s wife Mary looking after the accounts and Naomi Smith, (who still works for cruise.co.uk) as a fresh college leaver, looking after bookings.

By 1990 the company was appointed travel agents for 69 different newspapers and magazines for example The Belfast Telegraph, Liverpool Echo, Glasgow Herald, The Lady Magazine and BBC Radio Times.

By 1992 the company was so big, they started to charter ships with Fred.Olsen cruise line, which meant they would ‘buy’ the whole ship for a particular cruise and handle all the bookings from start to end themselves.

The company was so successful, and we became Cunards’ Top Agent in UK.

By the late 90’s, as more people started cruising and more travel agents were selling cruises, the Reader Offers Holidays were not as successful as it used to be, and so this side of business finished.

The company started more direct advertising and tour operating and in the year 2000 launched their cruise.co.uk website, not really knowing what effect this will have on the company.

In 2001 Andrew agreed the sail of half the company to Carnival Corporation in Miami. Carnival corporations already owned the Cunard Cruise Lines, Seabourn, Holland America and various others, all together 13 major cruise lines.

In 2004 the Carnival Corporations bought out the other half of Victoria Travel under the agreement made in 2001.

In 2005 Andrew together with Seamus Conlon bought the company back with the investment from venture capitalists and concentrated on progress, changes and growth of the company mainly as a web based company.

In 2008 the company won the award of The Best European Travel Agent. This success has been repeated in 2009 and recently we won the award for The Worlds Best Travel Agent.
Today, Victoria Travel Services / www .cruise.co.uk is the largest online travel agent with 57 employees and with over 4 million online visitors per year and have most active social network of any cruise operators.