River Cruise Advisor

For the past five years, if you wanted to book a Uniworld river cruise, you could do it one of several ways. You could book through Uniworld, but the river cruises were also available in the brochures of Uniworld’s sister companies Trafalgar Tours and Brendan Vacations.

Not anymore.

Starting with 2010 river cruises, Uniworld will not be cross-sold by any of the other brands owned by its parent company TravCorp, with the exception of Insight Vacations.

Insight will include Uniworld’s Nile River cruise on the River Tosca in its brochure.

“Our ownership has invested a huge amount of money not only in our ships, but also in our marketing,” said Uniworld President Guy Young. “We have a very strong brand presence, and we’re preferred with a lot of the same [travel agents] that Trafalagar is preferred with. … The decision was made now that we should stand on our own two feet.”

“We don’t really need to lean on our sister companies,” he added. Young said Trafalgar, Brendan and Insight would focus on their core product, escorted tours.

Uniworld plans to continue to expand its presence in the U.S. and in other source markets.

“In 2009, during a global recession, our ownership went ahead with significant refurbishments on our existing fleet and also introduced two new luxury ships, one in Europe along the Danube and the other in Egypt along the Nile,” said Young.