Thursday February 20th

There has been a lot of love since last Thursday - primarily because of valentines Day on the Friday, which was a great reason for the good people here at CLIA UK & Ireland to tell everyone about some recent developments in the resources, events and learning that is on offer - here Travel Weekly talk about the CLIA River Cruise Expo in London (read here), and here is the story on other enhancements (read here).

Of course it wasn't all just about us!  There has been plenty of news this week about continued refurbishment of existing cruise ships.  Here the US version of Travel Weekly talks about the changes to Crystal Serenity - read here; and here is the story on Celebrity Cruises upgrading it's suites: read here

Meanwhile with more investment meaning more ships, news emerged this week from Norwegian Cruise Lines of it's next ship Norwegian Escape, which is larger than Norwegian Epic and includes an expanded haven area (94 suites compared to 64 on Getaway) read here.

And Norwegian were also in the news this week for reporting their figures in what they described as a 'Seminal Year' - read here

Talking of new ships - how great to see the announcement from CroisiEurope of a new river ship on the Rhine, which will take just 84 guests and is being billed as a 4 star ship - read here

With non-ship specific news, here in the UK MSC Cruises announces a change to its senior team with a newly created role of Commercial Director UK & Ireland and a promotion for Stephen Moffett.  Read the story from TTG here.

And talking of MSC Cruises - great to see them hosting a huge international travel agent event on-board Splendida next week to acknowledge travel agent partners from around the world - read here

To keep everyone inspired and to remind us of the incredible places that cruising connects, then read this great piece from the Telegraph on Arctic Cruises through Greenland - read here

To conclude for this week, a reminder of our February Informer so you do not miss a thing - read here - and our latest listing of webinars and events - read here - and if that wasn't enough then we are pleased to announce our Selling Cruise Conference mobile website (built to read on the go!) - visit here