Jane McDonald’s TV show generates 1,000 river cruise enquiries
Upmarket river cruise company Uniworld has been ‘blown away’ by interest after one of its river boats was featured on Channel 5’s Cruising with Jane McDonald on Friday evening.
Uniworld received more than 40,000 web visits over the weekend and 1,000 enquiries after the programme showed McDonald on a Budapest to Passau cruise on its vessel S.S. Maria Theresa.
Uniworld UK managing director Kathryn Beadle said: "We have been completely blown away by the response from the trade and consumers.
"We knew that the show was going to be huge, but the level of interest has exceeded all expectations.
"During Friday night’s episode our web team was closely monitoring the Uniworld UK website to ensure that we could handle the traffic, and they said that the volume of referrals pouring in was akin to watching the numbers shooting up on a Las Vegas slot machine.
"We are now dealing with nearly 1,000 enquiries from customers, and this is a phenomenal opportunity for our travel agent partners to really capitalise on interest from the show.
"We opened our call centre on a Sunday for the first time this weekend, to ensure that we were delivering a full service for our trade partners at this busy period."
Channel 5 reported the four-part series Cruising with Jane McDonald is its most successful new launch so far this year.
Across combined television and on demand viewing, audience figures for episode three, featuring Uniworld’s Danube river cruise, are expected to reach two million.
Beadle continued: "The show has been wonderful for Uniworld, but there’s also enormous benefit for the river cruise industry as a whole, as it has really helped to explain what travelling on the waterways is all about.
"I’ve been contacted by many travel agents who have said that watching Cruising with Jane McDonald has given them a much clearer understanding of the product, and that they will be now looking to sell rivers for the first time."
Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection features luxurious ships with an average capacity of 130 guests, exclusive excursions, gourmet cuisine, and one of the highest staff-to-guest ratio in the river cruise industry.
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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