The cruise specialist is serving leisure groups alongside corporate clients, reflecting a wider push to make organised sailings fit more kinds of shared travel.
Epix Cruise and Travel is broadening its group cruise business to serve leisure travellers alongside companies planning corporate events and retreats. The San Diego-based company, also known as Epix, is returning to family, social and common-interest vacation planning while retaining its corporate group services. The move positions group cruising as a format for both organised holidays and business gatherings, with the company helping customers assess cruise lines, ships, itineraries, stateroom options and group rates.
The business was founded in 2009 as a Cruise Holidays franchise and initially focused on individual travel before moving into family reunions, social groups, yoga and fitness groups and other organised sailings. It later concentrated primarily on corporate cruise travel, including company offsites, employee incentive trips, sales events and leadership retreats. Its latest direction restores the leisure side of that model without removing corporate groups from its offering.
Epix says its expanded service will cover family and extended-family groups, family reunions, friends and social groups, school and alumni reunions, clubs, organisations, yoga and fitness groups and other parties planning holidays together. The company’s website also lists corporate meetings and off-sites, church and faith groups, community organisations and associations among the types of groups it can help plan. The service is centred on matching each group with suitable ships, destinations, accommodation and onboard arrangements.
The change comes as the cruise sector offers a broader range of ships, destinations and onboard and shore-based experiences, according to Epix founder Aubrey Williams. The company points to the development of private islands, beach clubs and other exclusive destinations as examples of the options now available to groups. That wider choice gives travel planners more ways to shape a shared trip around a group’s interests, whether the purpose is reconnection, celebration, fitness or business.
For Epix, the expanded focus represents a return to a more personal form of group vacation planning while preserving the specialist knowledge required for corporate travel. Its proposition is not limited to booking cabins; it includes evaluating the practical differences between cruise lines, itineraries, room categories and group pricing. The approach leaves the company serving two related but distinct audiences, with organised cruising providing a common framework for both leisure experiences and company events.
