Uniworld is elevating its river cruises with more land tours. At an India-themed Uniworld event in Sydney on Wednesday night, Uniworld Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand, Alice Ager announced that Travel Corporation (TTC) sister brand Luxury Gold will soon join the river cruise operator’s portfolio.
“In the next few weeks, my team and I will take on one of the TTC luxury brands in the portfolio, and it’s called Luxury Gold,” she told guests at the event.
With its “fabulous, beautiful, five-star boutique hotels [and] Michelin-starred dining experiences”, Ager said it made “so much sense” for the luxury travel brand to essentially join with Uniworld.
“We’re in front of luxury clients every single month, doing our consumer events around Australia and New Zealand. Why aren’t we talking about Luxury Gold?” she explained.
The tie-up has already begun, too, with Uniworld adding Luxury Gold’s brochure to “every single one of our ships in the staterooms”.
“And already our customers on board are going, ‘I’ve never heard of this. I didn’t even know we could do that’.”
As well as making sense, Ager said the new proposition wasn’t “complicated”.
“Because we already do a lot of cruise and land combinations,” she added.
“If you think about our India itinerary, we already spend nights and time on land, staying in hotels, doing things on land, and then we embark on a ship and do a river cruise. This will be no different.
Ager gives further examples in the European context.
“There’s an itinerary in Luxury Gold called ‘British Royale’, and that goes from London up to Edinburgh. We’re just going to add on a little flight from Edinburgh over to Charles de Gaulle – and your clients are going to jump on a seven-night cruise in Paris up into Normandy. And we’re going to give it a whole new perspective,” she said.
“The same for ‘Ultimate Italy’. Pair it with our Jewels of the Veneto in Venice… it’s going to be heaven. And, of course, Spain and Portugal.”
Fresh fleet
The new Uniworld-Luxury Gold collaboration comes as the boutique river cruise operator readies for a massive expansion, which includes boosting capacity by 40% over the next five years thanks to the addition of eight sleek new ships.
The first of these, the S.S. Emilie, is due in March.
“So she’s already floated out of the shipyard,” the Uniworld ANZ MD said.
“As you can imagine, she epitomises style, art, culture and just beauty.” And bookings for Q1 2026 are “nearly sold out”.
Elsewhere, Uniworld is about to charter an Aqua Expeditions ship in Indonesia for the first time, complementing its charter of an Aqua ship in Peru on the Amazon.
“That is called the Aqua Blue, and we are taking a number of departures in 2027,” Ager said.
This follows a recent announcement that Uniworld and Seabourn are joining forces to offer a joint luxury river and ocean cruise, the first such collaboration by the cruise lines.
“This building out of the brand architecture is because we need to have these experiences available to suit the needs of every luxury traveller,” Alice remarked.
“Uniworld is going to be taken to another level. We’ll be chasing the luxury traveller like never before.
“We want our brand to become a ‘super brand’ that people might recognise, so that when a customer walks into your office, as a travel agent, and they say, look, ‘I want to book a river cruise’, they might even say, ‘I actually want to book a Uniworld one’, which I know they’re not doing right now – and thank you for always putting them out there in front of your clients.”
To this end, Uniworld needs travel advisors’ help “more than we’ve ever needed you”.
“Because, despite the same brand, the same positioning, things are a little bit different. We have to work really smart. I actually need you to sell more Uniworld,” Ager said.
Ager also touched on the acquisition of The Travel Corporation by private equity firm Apollo, but said that its new owners’ vision of Uniworld “very much aligned with ours”.
“Apollo is really deeply committed to bringing our brand to life in the real world, with some real investment into brand awareness.”
“They want to position Uniworld at the top of the river cruise market, investing deeply into a brand-new [new] build fleet.”
Eye on India
After highlighting its Egypt cruises in 2024, Uniworld focused its annual travel trade gathering on its Indian cruises, specifically on the Ganges River.
With this in mind, guests at the event heard from the India Consul General in Sydney, Dr S. Janakiraman, and Uniworld India-based Cruise Director Arjun Sinsinwar, who talked about what makes cruising in India with Uniworld so special (apparently, lots of access and immersion).
Ager said a recent transformative trip to the Ganges inspired the India-themed evening, which was filled with live Indian music, food and of course, lots of colour, as guests dressed in their best Indian-inspired garb.
The highlight of the evening, however, was the Bollywood-style dancing, in which everyone present participated in an all-in celebratory dance. And for Uniworld, it seems there’s plenty to celebrate.
