Speaking at the line’s “All Stars of the Sea” trade event onboard MSC Fantasia last week, Steve Williams told TTG that training UK agents was “key” to promoting the line within UK market

It comes after MSC announced its 3,223-passenger ship Magnifica would home port in Southampton in 2018.

Williams, who joined the line from Royal Caribbean last month, admitted there was an “awareness issue” about MSC in the UK, but he said the line was focused on addressing this.

“Training will form a big part of the sales team’s role out on the UK high street. I’ve already had one of my team out in the south west and the response has been fantastic from the agents,” he said.

“They said that they had never seen a person from MSC before, so it was great that we came in. They want training and want to understand the product. I believe training will be key.”

Williams added that the line would also increase its agent ship visits, fam trips and road shows.

Last week MSC announced it would be increasing its number of UK sales team members from six to 14 - a move designed to improve relationships with key regional partners.

“Where we were really missing a link in the past was on the high street; supporting stores like Thomas Cook, Tui and the consortium members,” Williams said.

“They will be absolutely critical to our success - MSC draws in a lot of new to cruise and new to cruise customers generally [prefer to use] high street agents.”

MSC has also created the position of head of retail; responsible for managing the regional sales teams and also handling head office relationships with agent and operator partners.

Andrea Stafford, former regional sales manager at Tui and ex-regional account manager of Royal Caribbean International, will take up the role on January 3.

Commenting on Stafford’s appointment, Williams said: “I’ve worked with Andrea previously and she has experience in handling a field sales team. She will be responsible for looking at the long-term strategic business plan to take those accounts forward.

“Colin Rillie of Royal Caribbean will also join as our national account manager covering Northern Ireland and Scotland. We’re not known in Northern Ireland, so we have a job to do there,” he added.

MSC will be pumping €6 billion of investment into 11 new ships over the next decade with the goal of increasing worldwide passengers from 1.7 to 4.8 million by 2026, the line’s UK managing director Antonio Paradiso, revealed.

He insisted he was unconcerned about the additional capacity coming into the market from other cruise lines.

“The market is big enough to accommodate all cruise lines,” he added. “I believe that competition is always good. It allows you to think outside the box and be more and more creative.”