Fred Olsen confirms head office redundancies

“The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the cruise industry particularly hard," said Deer.

“We are confident in the future of our business and are seeing a good number of guests transferring to next year, as well as new bookings for 2021, which shows there is confidence and demand for cruise.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that we still don’t know when we can sail again, with the government still advising against cruising.

"Sadly, this does mean that we have had to streamline our head office operations by around one third.

“We are supporting all of our team members who have been affected by this restructure, including support with CV writing and interview skills.”

The news comes less than a month after the line confirmed it had acquired two ships from Holland America Line.

The line said Bolette and Borealis, formerly Amsterdam and Rotterdam, would boost capacity, “modernise” the Fred Olsen fleet, and help ensure the company “returns to the water in a stronger position”.