NorthLink is to consolidate its package holiday options under its own NorthLink Cruise Tours brand.

The decision to develop a solo approach to promoting cruise tour holidays to Orkney and Shetland was taken after NorthLink, Orkney Tourist Board and Shetland Islands Tourism concluded that their joint Viking Island Holidays initiative was not working effectively.

NorthLink commercial director Gareth Crichton said: “Essentially, we have been beaten by the clock. All of the parties involved in the tri-partite exercise did so in good faith and we are disappointed that Viking Island Holidays, as originally conceived, won’t now happen.

v“The project was originally promoted by the Tourist Boards with Orkney in the lead. We were happy to work alongside the boards in the belief that what was good for the tourist industry in the Northern Isles was also good for us,” he said.

Crichton added: “We could only wait so long. Resources were tied up in the project and, to be frank, nothing was happening. There is a need now for us to re-allocate budgets to support the launch of our service on October 1 and to ensure our customers get the product they are looking for.”

The VIH brand was launched at Scotland’s Travel Fair in Glasgow earlier this year. The key issue which could not be resolved within the available timescale was the formal structure under which the tri-partite venture would have operated.

The Tourist Boards also experienced difficulties surrounding the degree of flexibility available to them in order to enter into subsidiary commercial ventures. There were also insurmountable concerns from the travel trade in the Northern Isles regarding the proposed role for the tourist boards developing their own inclusive holiday/tour itineraries.

Crichton said: “Ultimately, time has beaten the project. The impending launch of NorthLink’s service required a clear decision on way forward. NorthLink will now consolidate its package holiday options under its own NorthLink Cruise Tours brand. This was a difficult decision for us to take but we feel that it is the right one.”

Shetland Islands Tourism chief executive Maurice Mullay said: “Everyone concerned has put a great deal of time and effort into the project. We’re extremely disappointed that we can’t make it work within the timescale that we set ourselves.

“It was never going to be easy. It was originally conceived as a 3-year project. There was a requirement to condense it into two years to acquire funding. It was something new and exciting but there were just too many different interests to satisfy. The key thing is that while we have not managed to secure this project, we do remain very close to NorthLink and we have a number of other shared promotional activities planned which we very much hope will bear fruit,” said Mullay.

Orkney Tourist Board chief executive Barbara Foulkes said: “The VIH exercise was well worth trying. We have all given it our best shot but the amicable decision arrived at was that all of the pieces couldn’t be put together in time. It was certainly a concept well worthy of exploration but the difficulties which it threw up proved, regrettably, to be insurmountable.”