Flood of bookings for Oasis

The European debut of Oasis of the Seas is almost 18 months away, but it is generating an unprecedented demand for bookings, according Royal Caribbean’s UK office.
Thousands of people have pre-registered their interest in order to be at the front of the queue for the official opening of bookings to the general public tomorrow (Thursday).
Members of the line’s Crown and Anchor loyalty club could make bookings from yesterday and Royal Caribbean’s reservations team has been working overtime. Part time workers have been drafted in to work full time and people from other departments across the business are answering phones and taking bookings.
UK vice-president and general manager Jo Rzymowska said: “The thousands and thousands of pre-registrations to be one of the first to book Oasis of the Seas’ European cruises are simply mind-blowing and the ship really is living up to its incredible reputation as being a game changer for the industry. We are delighted with the huge reaction from guests and the ship’s first ever transatlantic sailing from the UK is, without a doubt, a really hot holiday ticket.
“We traditionally always open sales to our loyalty club members first, and the volume into our call centre has been beyond all expectations. We have increased the size of the team and have contingency team members ready across the whole business to handle the peak in calls we are expecting when the ship opens for general sale on Thursday at midday.”
One travel agent told me: “We’ve had quite an exciting time in the call centre over the past few days. It’s like the good old days in travel when you used to get a queue out of the door when the following year’s holidays went on sale.”
Oasis and its sister ship Allure of the Seas are the biggest cruise ships in the world, capable of carrying more than 6,000 passengers and 2,164 crew. It normally cruises seven-day itineraries in the Caribbean, but will be arriving in Europe in September 2014 for a scheduled dry-dock.
Before its overhaul, it will sail Transatlantic from Fort Lauderdale, run two five-night cruises from Barcelona and then a voyage to Rotterdam. From there it calls at Southampton on October 15, 2014, before setting back out across the Atlantic.
For more information, or to book a cruise, go to Cruise1st.co.uk