Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Thursday the 5th of June.

One of the very fast-growing parts of the travel industry is expedition cruises. And I'm intrigued to

find out more about this because I've just discovered there is such a thing as an expedition cruise network,

and I'm delighted that the chair of that

network, Martin Johnson, is with me. So Martin, just before we talk about the network, what it is

what it does, tell us what your main business is. So yes, thank you Simon. Thanks very much for having

me. My main business is a tour operator specialising in the

wholesale of expedition cruises to the polar regions and beyond, called polar routes.

Been involved in expedition cruise sales now for over sort of 15, 16 years and been very privileged

enough to spend now counting over 150 days at sea on expedition cruise ships in predominantly the polar

regions and around the world.

Give us a sense, Martin, of what a polar cruise is like.

So this is basically a special kind of ship that heads maybe north to Svalbard,

in the Arctic or to Antarctica.

Yeah, so, I mean, it's a very different situation to,

although it's got cruise in the title, I think an expedition cruise is really all about the

destination, it's about the wildlife, it's about seeing nature, and seeing it in the most

responsible and authentic way possible. And an expedition cruise

normally has a team of experts, an expedition crew on board that will be experts in all sorts

of fields relevant to the areas you're travelling. So you mentioned the Arctic, there'll be polar

bear specialists and wildlife specialist, glaciologists, and again, you know, down in Antarctica as well.

And you are very much exploring these destinations with that expert team,

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