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Small ship cruise company to close after 10 years
Small ship cruise company Voyages to Antiquity is to close at the end of October after 10 years in business.
Its Oxford office, with 10 staff, will also close at the same time. The company also has five staff in the US.
In a letter to its agency partners, the Oxford-based company said it was ‘with regret’ that it had taken the ‘difficult decision’ to close the company after engine problems with its sole ship, the Aegean Odyssey, earlier this year.
The ship had been chartered to a long-term partner from April 2020 for a three-year period and since then its management has been looking at various options to continue the business.
"However, this process was severely impacted by the unforeseeable engine failure that occurred in April this year, forcing the company to cancel most of our remaining 2019 summer cruises," managing director Jos Dewing said in the letter to agents.
"Whilst we are pleased to advise that the ship has now been fully repaired, and that the final four cruises of the 2019 season will go ahead as scheduled, this serious issue has had an impact on the future plans and repairing the ship has been the absolute priority for management and the focus of the company during this difficult period."
The letter thanked agents for their support and said until the end of October it was still ‘very much business as usual’, with staff answering calls and supporting passengers due to travel on the last four sailings.
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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