Thursday October 9

Firstly an apology for a gap in our weekly blogging - with lots of travelling and so much happening in the industry (including Cruise Week) we have skipped a couple of weeks... but we are back to business!

We start with a great opinion piece in Travel Weekly from Lucy Huxley who tells us why we should keep the selling of cruise holidays nice and simple - read here - and in that vein Thomas Cook unveil their first 11 cruise concept stores too! - read here

CLIA has also been very busy!  We announced last week that we have teamed up with Travel Counsellors as our new travel agent members - really great to have them on-board - read here - and we have launched a worlds first - a 100 Brochure Rack where the latest brochures can be downloaded, printed or shared - read more

In other news, great to see Kathryn Beadle, formerly of Hurtigruten now heading to the rivers with Uniworld - read here.  We wish her every luck in the new role.

Celebrity Cruises this week looked to families as they launched teenage-friendly shore excursions - read here.

Silver Galapagos, one of a number of expedition ships operated by the ultra-luxury cruise line, is finishing off its latest renovation programme - read here -  whilst Oasis of the Seas gets a refurb on entirely different level! - read here.

Over at American Cruise Lines their new 150 guest riverboat has now been named as American Eagle - the new ship will operate on the Mississippi from March next year.

All Cruise Week Travel Weekly have been running daily blogs by key people within the CLIA family - you can catch up with them all on the Travel Weekly website, but here is a flavour from CLIA Chair Jo Rzymowska on why we should all #lovecruise - read here,  and here from Lynn Narraway, Chair of the CLIA UK & Ireland PR Committee on why we are stronger together - read here.

Have a great week!