CRUISE company Costa Cruises and low-cost airline Ryanair have announced a commercial alliance - the first tie-up between a major cruise company and a low cost airline.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Italian cruise operator will be Ryanair's exclusive partner cruise line for the next three years, until 2012.

The aim of the partnership is to "create business synergies in Europe, especially in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and emerging countries, including those in Scandinavia."

To celebrate the new partnership, Costa Cruises has announced it will offer £100 onboard credit for each cabin booked via Ryanair's website until March 16, 2009. This promotion will be valid with all regular cruise deals but is not combinable with existing Ryanair special offers.

In 2008 Costa Cruises claims that it carried approximately 1.2 million guests on board its ships and this figure is expected to reach 1.5 million by 2010.

In the 2008/2009 fiscal year Ryanair will reportedly carry 58.5 million passengers and the airline expects this figure to hit the 100 million mark by 2012.

There are 50 Ryanair routes departing from the UK and other European locations connecting destinations close to the ports of departure for Costa Cruises in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe: Venice, Savona, Civitavecchia, Palermo, Barcelona, Marseilles, Kiel.

Costa Cruises will be the only cruise line on Ryanair's website thus boosting its web visibility.

"This agreement enables us to further extend our potential customer base by reaching a type of traveller that regularly uses the web, namely professionals aged between 25 and 45," said Costa's Sales Director Europe and New Markets Angelo Capurro.

"This strategy is very much in line with our large-scale fleet expansion program, with five new ships due to enter service, three of which to be delivered over the next 12 months," he continued.

Capurro has insited that the airline would not be offer preferential rates that would undercut existing agency partners.

He said: "We want to reassure agents that we won't be trashing prices through the Ryanair website."

Costa UK's Managing Director, Marco Rosa, agreed with his colleague: "This is a new product. We don't want to move the typical cruise passenger who would book through a travel agent.

This is one extra channel on top of the existing ones."

Rosa made it clear that the line was looking for supplementary business from current Ryanair passengers who would be new to cruising.

"There are a number of passengers we are missing because we are not so strong online.

"Our growth until 2012 is huge and everyone is growing capacity so the whole point is finding new passengers.

"The agreement enables us to further extend our potential customer base by reaching a type of traveller that regularly uses the web, namely professionals aged between 25 and 45.

"This strategy is very much in line with our large scale fleet expansion programme with five new ships due to enter service, three of which to be delivered over the next 12 months."

Costa have also just released their new cruise brochure for 2010 offering new customer incentives, exclusive product innovations and original itineraries. The new 2010 brochure features exclusive destinations including Dubai, the Far East and the Indian Ocean, as well as new itineraries such as summer cruises to Greenland plus special eco-tourism and food and wine excursions.

With approximately 1,200,000 cruise guests in 2008 (a record for the European industry as a whole), encouraging performances for the first months of 2009 and a recently announced partnership with low-cost airline Ryanair, Costa Cruises are continuing to expand in spite of the global downturn.

The Italian company's growth is backed by a major fleet expansion program and ongoing product investment. Costa Cruises has more new ships on order or under construction than any other operator - five in all, scheduled for delivery by 2012 and entailing a total investment of €2.4 billion.

Three of the new ships will be launched over the next 12 months - the Costa Luminosa at the end of April, Costa Pacifica at the end of May and Costa Deliziosa at the end of January.

The Costa Luminosa and Costa Pacifica will be named together at an exceptional joint christening ceremony scheduled for June 5, 2009 in Genoa.