FTI Group, the German travel to car rental group, says it has signed an agreement with Peter Deilmann Reederei to assume marketing and operations of the 22,496 gross ton cruise ship.

FTI Group itself owns and operates the 9,870 gross ton Berlin that was originally built for Deilmann in 1980 but has changed hands several times over the years.

The move means that 11,400 travel agents in Germany, Switzerland and Austria will now be able to book cruises on the 1996 built Deutschland online, while Deilmann continues to accept bookings from individual passengers as before.

Ralph Schiller, ceo of FTI Group said the agreement will broaden the company’s cruise offerings to include a five star product. Deutschland is well known in the German speaking Europe as the stage set for Das Traumschiff,  based on the format of the US soap opera The Love Boat that was launched in the early 1980s and which ran for a long time.

The agreement is one of several involving smaller cruise shipping companies that seek cooperation to improve theirposition on the oligopolistic cruise market. Cruise & Maritime Voyages of the UK acquired Transocean Cruises in Germany a while ago and Saga Cruises, the UK based two ship oprator, started to sell cruises of Fred. Olsen Cruises Lines and MSC CRuises to widen its portfolio.