Scenic Group’s new UK boss says there is “a huge untapped opportunity” to grow sales by attracting luxury customers who have never cruised before.

Richard Twynam has already identified growth opportunities despite only joining the Australia-headquartered company, which operates Scenic and Emerald Cruises, just over three weeks ago.

He highlighted how luxury hoteliers Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons were launching cruise products for the first time to illustrate his point.

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Speaking in a Travel Weekly webcast this week, Twynam said: “There is a huge untapped opportunity here for luxury customers that are not cruisers.

“There’s an increase in cruise capacity from hoteliers; [cruise industry veteran] Larry Pimentel has announced Four Season and there’s also Ritz Carlton.”

Recent booking data seen by Twynam showed how some cruise customers booking 228-passenger Scenic Eclipse and the 100-passenger Emerald Azzurra were “not traditional cruisers”.

“These are people with a lot of wealth who just want to understand what it’s like to be on a yacht moored off [Italian island] Capri having a lovely drink as the sun sets and the beauty of these yachts is they’re smaller,” he said.

Twynam also reported passengers switching between Emerald and Scenic products as well as “trading up” from river to ocean sailings.

“Data that I saw this morning shows that some of our Emerald passengers are very similar whatever product they choose,” Twynam explained. “Some of the Emerald river cruise passengers are very similar to the Emerald yacht passengers. The data is evolving the whole time.”

Twynam explained how recent hires made by Scenic Group show how the firm plans to increase ocean cruise sales.

Both he and trade sales director Andrea Stafford have strong ocean experience on their CVs.

“If you look at the people the Scenic Group founders have hired recently, it’s people with ocean experience, because there is a massive opportunity,” he added.

Twynam has held freelance and part-time roles in travel since leaving four-ship ocean line Azamara in April 2020.

He said he only planned to take up a full-time travel role if he could lead a team and work for an operator with the most “exciting products in the industry”.

“To find that was quite hard but then when this opportunity came about I just seized on it,” he said.