LINDBLAD Expeditions’ Australian sales have stabilised and the business is now in the process of “building them back up again,” the company’s president & ceo Sven-Olof Lindblad told CW.

Since making its push on the Aussie market in 2013, Lindblad suffered a downward trend in sales for “a period of time”, driven largely by a fall in the Aussie dollar which affected price.

More recently however, the expedition cruise line has made positive gains in the local market.

“In the beginning we had more activity in Australia for destinations like the Kimberely, however we are no longer there and harvesting that unfortunately but we’ll be back there at some point,” Lindblad said.

“We are now in a position where we really have to make people understand our value proposition…if we do a good job at that I think Australia can grow further because it has a disproportionately high per capita interest in the kind of thing we do,” he added.

Consolidating its market appeal is a raft of new ships set to be launched over the next three years including National Geographic Venture in Dec 2018 and National Geographic Endurance in Q1 2020, as well as the prospect of opening up new remote cruise destinations.

“We’re going to head to the Northeast Passage which we’ve never done before…Northern Greenland and parts of the Canadian Arctic are also areas we are looking at,” Lindblad said.

“If you look at places like the Arctic and the Antarctic and how little of it is accessible, you go 100 miles in any direction it’s like unknown territory,” he added.

Pictured: Lindblad’s president and chief executive officer Sven-Olof Lindblad.