The British Travel Awards are the Oscars of the UK holiday industry, and some of you may have caught @CaptGreybeard’s tweets from the event last night.
It was a particular pleasure to have been invited to join Voyages of Discovery on their table, as they picked up the trophy for Best Niche Cruise Line – “niche” because their 650-passenger ship, Discovery, can cross the oceans, yet is small enough to reach out-of-the-way ports.
There was a double success for P&O Cruises, who not only won the category for Best Mainstream Cruise Line, but also picked up the prize for Best Luxury Cruise Line. In the mainstream category, Royal Caribbean came second, and Thomson Cruises were third. Celebrity pipped Cunard to second place among the luxury lines.
Best Family Cruise Line was Royal Caribbean, with P&O second and Disney third. Runners up in the Niche section were Hurtigruten and Disney. The Best River Cruise Line was Viking River Cruises, ahead of Swan Hellenic and Elegant River Cruises.
There was also a prize for Best Cruise Holidays Retailer, taken by Cruise Thomas Cook, who beat Thomson and Virgin Cruise Holidays to the title.
What was my highlight of the evening – apart from the chance to drink champagne with some of the top people in the UK cruise industry? I think it has to be watching presenter Greg Davies, a giant of 6ft 8in, struggling to get down low enough to air-kiss Sun travel editor Lisa Minot – tanned and radiant after her recent Caribbean cruise on Ruby Princess – as she came on stage to present the awards sponsored by her paper. Little and Large? Beauty and the Beast? You decide.
About the Author: John Honeywell
John Honeywell is a travel writer specialising in cruise ships and cruise travel. Winner of CLIA UK's Contribution to Cruise award 2017.
John,
As with so many of these “awards”, the results make one wonder what the criteria for the awards are, and what the demographics of the qualifying “pool” of candidates, and the “voters”, are. I mean, how can P&O possibly win an award for Best Luxury Cruise Line when by most assessments their ships rate 3-star+ to 4-star. Do the organisers of the award seriously suggest that a ship like Ventura, fist-fights and burning Christmas trees and all, or boring-as-blancmange Arcadia, are actually more luxurious than Seabourn Odyssey, Silver Spirit, Seven Seas Voyager or Crystal Serenity? It just shows what a nonsense this whole “awards” malarky is.