British Billionaire Looks to Cruises for Latest Virgin Joint Venture

British billionaire Richard Branson, whose business empire covers airlines, trains and space tourism, is looking at setting up a cruise ship joint venture.

Branson is in talks with potential partners about a cruise ship operation, possibly in Florida and the Caribbean, based on a similar model to his airline Virgin Atlantic, his company said on Friday.

It is a market we are looking at it. He has not taken any decisions as to whether we are going to go ahead and enter that market yet,” a spokesman for Branson´s business empire Virgin Group told Reuters.

“It would be more towards something quite special rather than something at the lower end of the market.”

Branson, whose Virgin empire stretches from planes and trains to music and personal finance, was in Miami this week talking to potential partners.

Virgin said it was not eyeing the budget end of the market, distancing itself from entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou´s EasyCruise business which launched cheap cruises on the French Riveria this year.

Haji-Ioannou said he expected Virgin to target a new cruise ship market, somewhere between the older crowd which dominates the industry and EasyCruise´s younger crowd.

“Virgin will take the market that is too old to rock and roll and too young to tango,” Haji-Ioannou, who founded British low-cost airline easyJet, said in a statement.