Nowegian Cruise Line Launches ‘Walk For Wellness’ and Pledges £10,000 to Aid Better Mental Health in the UK Travel Industry

The initiative promotes the well-being of travel industry professionals and encourages them to ‘get out and get walking’.

The cruise line partners with ABTA LifeLine and will donate money for every mile walked.

‘Walk for Wellness’ registration now open at market.ncl.com/ukwalk.

Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), the innovator in global cruise travel, today announced the launch of its month-long ‘Walk for Wellness’ initiative in the United Kingdom, which kicks off on 1 May 2024.

Coinciding with Mental Health Awareness Week (13 – 19 May 2024), ‘Walk for Wellness’ is based on a very simple premise: Sometimes a walk can do wonders for your physical and mental health. This initiative invites travel industry professionals to take a walk with a collective goal of reaching 40,000 miles, across five milestones.

To give back to the UK travel industry and aid better mental health beyond ‘Walk for Wellness’, NCL is partnering with ABTA LifeLine, a charity which offers vital support to agents in times of uncertainty, assisting with mental health concerns, as well as providing financial and emotional assistance when faced with redundancy, accidents, and bereavement. NCL will be making monetary donations for each milestone reached with a goal of £10,000.

Gary Anslow, Regional Vice President and Head of UK&I and said: “More than ever, it’s critical to have conversations around our health and wellbeing. We work in a fast-paced and often pressurised industry, and so it’s all too easy for stresses to mount up. It’s important to manage those stresses and walking is a great (and free) way to do that. Our ambition is for agents across the country to join a likeminded community, to inspire and encourage each other across the month of May, to put wellbeing at the forefront of our minds, and to raise some money for ABTA LifeLine at the same time. We will be making donations based on the miles we can achieve together – all we need agents to do is to join us on our 40,000-mile walk.”

Trudie Clements, Director of ABTA LifeLine said, “We’re thrilled that NCL is shining a light on the importance of prioritising physical and mental wellbeing as part of everyday life with their campaign ‘Walk for Wellness’. Hiking boots are on and ready to smash the 40,000-mile target!’

As of today, travel industry professionals in the UK can register for ‘Walk for Wellness’ at NCL’s Walk for Wellness UK&I 2024. Once they have registered, they can connect their Smartphone or wearable with the free MoveSpring app and start logging their miles. Throughout the initiative, participants will be encouraged to share photos, using the hashtag #walk4wellnessUKI. As an added incentive, NCL will be setting challenges throughout the month, with the opportunity to win one of four balcony staterooms for two on Norwegian Aqua’s three-day launch cruise, a polaroid camera, spa and sport vouchers.

‘Walk for Wellness’ was first launched in Australia and New Zealand in 2020 to maintain personal contact with partners and instill a sense of community when the whole travel industry came to a standstill. The campaign has been successfully hosted four times in the region and was awarded “Most Outstanding Industry Support – Cruise” and “Most Outstanding Marketing Campaign – Supplier” at the National Travel Industry Awards in 2022. In October 2023, NCL’s Continental European office launched their equivalent of ‘Walk for Wellness’ in the DACH market, which brought more than 750 agents together, to walk 56,000 miles and raised nearly € 10,000 for the mental health charity Aktionsbündnis Seelische Gesundheit (ABSG).