At the heart of the success of P&O’s remarkable new cruise ship Britannia, says the company’s head man, lies the fact it is now acceptable to find all things British as cool and desirable.

It is a bold statement from David Noyes, Chief Executive of Southampton-based Carnival Cruises, speaking as the 2015 summer cruise season from the Hampshire port gets into full swing.

“Promoting British values and British culture is now very acceptable. Whether it is British food, British style, British design, our customers accept that the UK brand is something good to be associated with,” commented Noyes.

Gone are the days, he confirmed, when a nod towards making cruises more Brit-friendly meant ensuring the tea bags were acceptable and there was Marmite and brown sauce on the menu. Today the British were very comfortable and very proud of a new found confidence in their culture.

“It is very exciting that we can take the very best of British and showcase this all over the world.”

Since her naming by the Duchess of Cambridge earlier this year, Britannia has proved a success with cruise clients and travel agents alike, her sailings from Southampton prompting rave reviews and customer feedback. The resulting feel-good factor won’t come as a surprise to the company, however, as they consulted with 20,000 current and potential cruise clients to find out what they would like to see and experience on board. The result has been hailed by many as the latest step forward in British cruising experience on board the largest cruise ship ever built for the British market.

“We have been pleasantly surprised by the reactions from those who have sailed with Britannia so far. The feedback has been very positive.”

Many of the ship’s innovations are now set to be retro-introduced the rest of the P&O fleet, Noyes confirmed. But that didn’t mean the baby would be thrown out with the bath water.

“We know that many of our clients enjoy the P&O ships very much the way they are so we won’t be losing what makes our ships special to people. The additions will be carefully thought through.”

For Noyes, promoted to Chief Executive of Celebrity UK last year with operating responsibility for P&O and Cunard, the success of P&O and the cruise industry as a whole, emerging from the worst global financial turndown since the 1930s almost unscathed, comes as little surprise. And he sees the success continuing into the future.

“What we are seeing is more and more people looking for multi-generational holidays and this is exactly what modern cruising offers. Here is a holiday where you can have Mum and Dad, the children and their grand-parents all being catered for. The message is getting through that cruising is cool for children. This year we have 13,000 children already booked to cruise and a lot of this is through pester power, children telling their parents they want to go on a cruise holiday.

“The image of cruising is changing. P&O’s advertising campaign with (TV comedian) Rob Brydon for instance has been a major success. The message is that this is a holiday for everyone and it is getting through. We are dispelling all those old myths about what a cruise holiday used to be seen as.

“What we have to do is to keep on showing the breadth of choice. For too long people used to say ‘cruising is not for me- too structured, too many rules’. Now that is certainly not the case.”