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.

The lines I know from the inside: Regent Seven Seas, Silversea, Viking ocean and river, Oceania, Explora Journeys, Ponant, Seabourn, and the river specialists — Scenic, Uniworld, AmaWaterways, and Riverside Luxury Cruises. Not from brochures. From sitting in the dining rooms, sleeping in the suites, watching how the crew handles a tender operation when the weather turns. In December 2026, I'm aboard Silversea's Silver Cloud sailing from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico, as a paying passenger, adding to a library of firsthand experience that started in 2012 and keeps growing.

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.

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.