Tour operator and travel agency Skylord Travel has hired former Jetline Director Andrew Todd and five staff to launch a new cruise and holiday brand.
Skylord Cruise and Holidays will initially sell packages direct to the public and via the firm’s four existing travel agents in Rickmansworth, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
In the future, it will also sell flight-inclusive packages to third-party agents, said Skylord Managing Director Ujjwal Sehgal. “We are looking at increasing our ATOL to do this, but we will start off selling direct and via our own agents,” he told Travel Gossip.
Skylord currently has an ATOL for almost 87,000 passengers, 34,000 of which are ATOL to ATOL for its sales via retailers.
The company has hired former Jetline Head of Cruise Martin Tanner, and four of Jetline’s 24 former staff alongside Andrew to launch the new brand.
Cruise veteran Manish Suchde, who previously worked with Jetline ahead of its collapse, and also Forever Cruises, will be involved.
Andrew (pictured above) said the company will use an AI-led marketing strategy to promote holidays to consumers on social media platforms, including TikTok and YouTube.
It also plans to work with ‘a handful’ of third-party travel agents to sell packages, which will be ‘quite bespoke’, said Andrew.
“Cruise will be the main focus of the business, but we will also be increasing the amount of other packages being offered by Skylord, which is mainly known for flight-only” he added.
Ujjwal said it will begin with ocean cruises, with river added later and expedition in the future.
