The Essex-based agency, Cruise Control, also traded under the brand 21st Century Travel Club and was responsible for £90m worth of cruise revenue in the UK. A separate sister company called Cruise Promotions Ltd traded as Cruise Egypt.

There are a "few thousand" customers currently on cruises booked though Cruise Control, according to an estimate from the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta), and about 75,000 people with bookings for cruises, who have not yet departed. Additionally there are 600 people on cruises booked with Cruise Promotions, although thousands more are likely to have bookings with the company, but those numbers have not yet been confirmed.

In anticipation of a deluge of phone calls from customers anxious to find out if their cruise will go ahead, Abta is advising people to call the cruise line with which their holiday is booked and has issued the details of dedicated numbers for each company (listed below).

While Cruise Control was an Abta member, Cruise Promotions was not, although it did hold an Atol bond with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which means that customers currently on holidays booked with either company will be able to continue their holiday as normal.

Abta membership means that the 75,000 customers who have booked cruises through Cruise Control or 21st Century Travel Club but not yet departed will be able to take their holiday, as the organisation has an account, funded by its members, which covers the cost.

But for anyone who has bookings with Cruise Egypt (the numbers not yet known to the CAA), and is due to travel after midnight tonight, their holiday will be cancelled, but they will receive a full refund.

Commenting on the collapse of Cruise Control, Bill Gibbons, director of the Passenger Shipping Association, said he thought that consumer confidence in the cruise sector would not be affected: "Cruise holidays are growing faster in popularity than any other type of holiday and we are confident that this will continue. More than a million British people now spend over £1billion on cruising every year."

The failure of Cruise Control, which had over 200 staff, will come as a shock to many in the travel industry. It claimed to be the largest retailer for cruise holidays in the UK, selling 16 per cent of cruise holidays in the UK last year - a sizeable chunk of the record 1.1 million UK holidaymakers who went on cruises in 2004.

Weeks of speculation over the financial stability of the company was brought to an end last week when Cruise Control announced that it had secured £4 million in funding, but by that stage a number of cruise companies, including P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, Ocean Village and Cunard had stopped selling cruises through the agency. And on Monday morning Abta announced that is was unable to meet its liabilities.

Page 2: Dedicated cruise help lines

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" Classic International Cruises 0845 603 1180 (c/o South Quay Travel & Leisure Ltd)

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