Riviera Travel named a new CEO in December: Matt Luscombe, a hospitality veteran who had worked for InterContinental Hotels Group as chief commercial officer for Europe and North Africa. A few months into his tenure, Luscombe spoke with river cruise editor Brinley Hineman at the ASTA River Cruise Expo in Amsterdam about his priorities; the brand's focus on new source markets, particularly in the U.S.; and how he believes his background in hotels blends seamlessly with the river cruising industry.
Matt Luscombe
Q: Tell me about your first months as CEO.
A: I've been with the company now for two months. I have spent that time meeting with guests, meeting travel advisors in the U.K. and in the U.S., and I've spent that time meeting with all sorts of different partners that we work with, whether that's river cruise operators, marketing partners, technology partners and so on.
Q: How has your experience in hotels primed you for this role?
A: Most of my career before Riviera was spent in the hotel industry, which, in some ways, is really similar to river cruises. We're kind of floating hotels, but in other ways, it is really different. One of the ways in which it's different is the whole sort of social dynamic on an escorted tour or river cruise, which is really special and something that we want to nurture.
Q: What's your vision for the company?
A: River cruise is an amazing, really special kind of holiday experience. And yet, the proportion of people who've been on a river cruise is still small. One job is to encourage more people to try river cruising with us, and the second job is to encourage them to come back again once they tried it the first time. And how do we get more people to try river cruising? Well, some of that's being smarter about who we target and what we offer. And speaking to many of the travel advisors here, they think, for instance, our solo offer [Riviera is dedicating one of its ships to solo travelers in 2027] is really distinctive and allows us to capture a big and growing share of the market. Mathematically, the biggest part of having more people try Riviera Travel is expanding our source market, from our U.K. heritage into new countries. The two we've picked are the Republic of Ireland and the United States.
Q: Riviera has been sharpening its focus on North America, but I wasn't aware of Ireland. Why there?
A: As I mentioned, one of the big differences in river cruise versus the hotel industry where I'm from is how sociable and interactive the holiday experiences are. And put simply, you want people to be able to communicate in the same language. We were historically a British company; English is the language we use. When we see some of our competitors mixing languages on the ship, they lose something from that guest experience. They lose something from the relationships that people can build. It doesn't mean that we couldn't expand into areas of Northern Europe, but it just makes so much sense to focus on English-language countries first.
Q: Your repeat business is about 80%, which is super high. How do you achieve that?
A: It is high. It's a privilege to wake up in the morning, and your job is to make people happy. It's lots of big things, like investing in new ships -- one of the newest fleets on the river -- and lots of small things. We're constantly looking at survey feedback and other things to kind of give us a steer. Having had more and more U.S. guests on our ships in the last couple of years, we've received feedback like, "Hey, you guys don't serve tequila at the bar." Well, so [now] we serve tequila at the bar.