“Wave is going to happen!” the president of Azamara has predicted.

Carol Cabezas made the confident statement on a visit to the UK to meet with key trade partners.

Asked how she could be so sure that the traditional peak selling period for cruises was going to take place in January 2023, she said: “Because September happened. You know that business is back if you have the mini-wave in the Fall, and it happened. September was spectacular for us. It’s been absolutely awesome so this gives us real confidence that full Wave is going to happen in the new year.”

Cabezas explained that one of the reasons for her visit was to announce a change to Azamara’s booking technology, which she admitted had been “sub-optimal”.

“We had to create brand new tech. We had to get off Royal Caribbean systems and onto new systems,” she said.

Cabezas explained that Azamara had plugged in a cruise reservations platform called Versonix, which is also used by the likes of Norwegian Cruise Holdings, Explora Journeys and Ama Waterways.

“So it will be very familiar to the trade,” she said.

Cabezas said it had been configured for Azamara’s needs.

“We need certain capabilities such as world cruises or being able to book back-to-back cruises seamlessly, so it’s been adapted to apply to our business. It will allow us to run Azamara better as it supports our product so much better. It’s been sub-optimal,” she said.

Cabezas was joined by two experts from Versonix to give a demonstration of the new booking platform to UK travel agent partners.