UK cruise website Cruise.co.uk is planning to expand into Europe after being named the best cruise travel agent on the continent.

It was the second successive year the firm has won the European Travel Awards accolade. And for the first time it attracted enough votes to make it eligible for the full World Travel Awards.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the company, which was originally known as Victoria Cruises, and managing director Seamus Conlon said scooping the world award at a ceremony in London next week would be the icing on the cake.

He believes Cruise.co.uk’s strategy of building a community of cruisers, most of whom are actually customers of other agents, means it can expect to get plenty of votes.

Cruise.co.uk claims it has 58,000 customer cruise reviews and its users have answered more than 104,000 questions and uploaded 7,000 photographs.

“Even though we are up against the Americans, our website is already bigger than many of the US sites,” Conlon added.

“At the moment the vast majority of people using our site do not book with us but in time we are hoping they will.”

A bespoke booking engine which Cruise.co.uk has developed itself is seeing 10% of bookings online, up to a top value of £24,000, Conlon said.

Winning the best European cruise agent award has prompted Cruise.co.uk to expand overseas.

It plans to have German and Spanish language websites in operation next year offering cruisers in those countries the chance to book in sterling.

Conlon said he predicted big growth in cruise passenger bookings from mainland Europe, as an increasing number of ships are based in ports such as Barcelona, Venice and Malaga.