Wave season traditionally brings the best deals of the year in the cruise industry. Apart from driving sales, for cruise brands, travel agents, and tour operators, this period can also boost brand visibility. It also determines whether a cruise brand sails smoothly toward success.

Having started as a junior copywriter during 2021's Wave Season, I've since grown into a senior copywriter and strategic lead — helping drive Virgin Voyages' Wave campaign across 2024, 2025, and 2026 to its most commercially successful period in company history. Each year built on the last: stronger metrics, higher efficiency, and a record that fell three years running. My contributions spanned:

• Developing clear offer messaging and visually bold assets.

• Crafting B2C content to build excitement while creating urgency at a key moment for the business.

• Designing sales collateral (B2B) to empower Travel Specialists to sell with confidence.

• January 2026 broke every record: Highest booking month in company history — surpassing Wave 2025, Wave 2024, and all prior benchmarks. Wave web traffic surged +98% YoY.

• Enhanced Status Match ranked #1 email of February 2026: A value-forward, non-discount send outperformed all Wave promotional emails — $5.2M in email revenue (+13% YoY) and 3,708 bookings (+23% YoY).

• March Kickers (all 4) closed the season strong: $82M in company bookings (3rd highest month ever); total March email revenue $6.3M (+26.5% YoY); revenue per email +50% YoY — highest efficiency ever recorded.

• Email engagement at a multi-year high: CTOR reached 1.76% (+0.17 ppts YoY); email bookings +23.4% YoY; revenue per unique send up across every major Wave window.

• Direct Mail delivered the highest-iROAS channel of the period: $110.6M in attributed revenue | 33,600 incremental bookings | 13.8x iROAS against an $8M investment.

2024’s growth was strong, while 2025 has shown higher absolute performance across both metrics.

• Wave 2025 outperformed its initial forecast: generating 17.5K bookings and over $52M in GTR; both significantly higher than Wave 2024 and Wave 2023.

• Higher revenue per email sent: $1.35 vs. $1.30 in 2024 (+$0.05 lift per send).

• Stronger revenue per unique click: $104.93 vs. $95.67 in 2024 (+$9.26 more value per click).

• Faster growth in click value: +35% over the last 90 days vs. +29% in 2024.

• Efficiency + impact combined: Emails are worth more per send and clicks are delivering deeper returns.

• Q1 2024: Highest WAVE revenue to date with Jan 2024 becoming highest booking month on record

• Campaign launch reported 70% direct booking increase vs YTD average.

• Rise in click to open rate (vs 2023) at 3.55% (up 22% over YTD) and revenue per email sent at $1.33 (up 57%)

• Q2 improved further vs. trend and historical performance contributed to success of WAVE ‘24
  Record-setting ticket prices and global web traffic achieved during the campaign

• Travel Agent traffic ↑ 24% YoY

• Direct Bookings ↑ 30% YoY