About Helen King

I did not build this agency because I needed something to do. I started it quietly, a year before the corporate world made the decision easier, because travel was the one thing I had always taken completely seriously. Twenty years in corporate North America. Flying 25 to 40 times a year for business. And I have been sailing as a paying passenger on the finest cruise lines in the world since 2012, learning what great travel requires from the inside out.

My husband asked me once what I was going to do in retirement. The answer was already there before he finished asking. Within three years of going all in, The Small Ship Collective had crossed a million dollars in revenue. I was standing in front of over 300 peers at our host agency conference. And I was still the person who loses sleep over your departure details so you never have to. Some things did not change.

I have sailed Regent Seven Seas and Viking as a paying passenger, and in December 2026 I am aboard Silversea's Silver Shadow for the first time, adding to a library of firsthand experience that started in 2012 and keeps growing. The other lines I work with, Oceania, Explora Journeys, Seabourn, Ponant and the river specialists Scenic, Uniworld, AmaWaterways and Riverside Luxury Cruises, I know through research and through clients who sail them, and I will always tell you which is which.

My clients are located in both Canada and the U.S., and I work in both currencies. I'm TICO registered in Ontario, which comes with consumer protections that Americans may not be familiar with. They're not first-time cruisers looking for a deal. They're people who have cruised before, or who have been researching for a year, and they're ready to invest in a sailing that matches what they're after, whether that's a world voyage on Regent, an expedition to Antarctica, or a river season through Europe. The investment typically runs $20,000 to $100,000. At that level, getting the line wrong costs more than money.

The size question comes up in almost every first conversation. Small ship means different things to different people, so I'll be direct about what it means here. The vessels I work with carry a few hundred passengers at most, and several carry fewer than 100. That changes how the trip actually works. You sit with the same people at dinner and the same crew know your preferences by the second morning. The ship can anchor in places a larger vessel cannot reach, which is why expedition itineraries (Antarctica, Svalbard, remote river routes) are built around this category of ship and not the other way around. Choosing small ship deliberately, with someone who has sailed these lines as a paying passenger, is what the first conversation here is for.

What I do is straightforward. We talk. I ask about what you've done before, what worked and what didn't, what you want from the trip beyond the brochure version. Then I make a recommendation based on that, not based on which line is running the best incentive for advisors this quarter. I'm not just a Regent specialist or a Silversea specialist or a Viking specialist. I work across all of these lines, which means the recommendation fits you, not my commission structure.