Enhancing passenger experience

Marine environments designed to perform.

Marine spaces work harder than land-based environments. Salt air, vibration, space and weight limits, and IMO regulations all shape what’s possible, while passengers still expect onshore levels of comfort and quality. Your onboard environment should do more than meet technical requirements. It should strengthen your brand, support passenger flow, enhance the experience and drive commercial performance. Whether you’re refreshing a ferry, upgrading a cruise space or developing a specialist vessel, WDC Spaces helps you get more value from your marine interiors through thoughtful design and delivery.

Using our FLEX methodology, we help you create marine environments that balance technical performance, passenger experience and commercial purpose.

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Marine design services

Brand perception & consistency

Create a more consistent onboard experience across every passenger touchpoint. By clarifying your brand, passenger expectations and commercial goals from the outset, your interiors can build recognition, trust and a stronger reason to travel with you again.

Floating hotel experiences

Give passengers the comfort, finish and attention to detail they expect from a hotel, while meeting the practical demands of life at sea. From premium cabins and suites to family-focused spaces, your accommodation can feel considered, comfortable and aligned with the wider onboard experience.

Ferry & cruise interior specification

Develop lounges, cabins, dining and retail spaces that meet marine-grade IMO fire and safety requirements without compromising brand identity. Materials, finishes, fixtures and products are selected to support durability, maintenance, weight, safety and passenger experience.

Revenue & dwell spaces

Make your onboard commercial areas easier to find, easier to understand and easier to use. Bars, retail outlets and food and beverage spaces can be planned around passenger flow, sightlines and positioning, helping turn footfall into spend and giving each area a clearer commercial role.

On-board customer communications

Bring clarity to the onboard offer through signage, menus, wayfinding and guest-facing communications. Every touchpoint should help passengers understand what is available, where to go and why it matters, while keeping the experience connected to your brand.

Passenger flow & navigation

Help passengers move confidently between key onboard destinations. Clear circulation routes, intuitive wayfinding and marine-grade signage can reduce congestion, improve orientation and create a smoother journey across the vessel.

Does this sound familiar?

1.

You know the interiors need refreshing, but extended vessel downtime and disruption make a full refurbishment difficult to justify.

2.

Onboard retail and F&B spaces aren’t delivering the spend they should. Poor layout and visibility are limiting conversion and average transaction value.

3.

Guests say the onboard experience doesn’t match their expectations of the brand.

4.

Repeat bookings aren’t growing, and the onboard experience isn’t doing enough to bring guests back.

5.

Different vessels in the fleet feel inconsistent, weakening brand recognition and diluting the passenger experience.

6.

Fire and safety standards reduce flexibility in materials and finishes, and your current design team often fail to resolve them in a way that preserves interior quality and style.

If any of these challenges feel familiar, your brand’s environment may not be working as hard as it should. We can help you change that.

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What we bring.

25

Years in business

150 +

Combined years of experience

200 +

Clients

400 +

Projects

30 +

Countries projects delivered across

20 %

Typical uplift in client performance

A selection of our projects.

See how we help marine operators shape onboard environments that meet technical demands, improve passenger journeys and create greater commercial value at sea.

See all marine projects

Marine

Brittany Ferries

Brand Strategy, Retail Optimisation, Retail Marketing Campaign Creation, Campaign Delivery, POS Design, Lifestyle Photography

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Marine

P&O Ferries

Marine Interior Design Strategy, Restaurant Interior Design, Hospitality Interior Design, Design Specification, Design Management, Graphic Design, Branding

See more detail

A process built to protect your investment.

Every project — from a single store refresh to a multi-site rollout — follows the FLEX process. A methodology refined across 20+ years and 500+ projects that takes you from strategic discovery through to a physical space that performs commercially, on time and on budget.

It's designed to surface the right questions early, align your stakeholders quickly, and maintain momentum through every stage — from discovery and concept through to delivery and rollout. You get clarity at every decision point, and a team that stays accountable from brief to opening.

The result isn't just a great-looking space. It's a commercially rigorous environment your customers respond to — and one your leadership team can see the return on.

Find out more about FLEX

Responsible by design.

From concept to roll-out, we guide you to make lower-impact decisions - planning for end-of-life, highlighting better materials and vetted suppliers - so even if sustainability isn’t your biggest priority, progress toward ESG and carbon impact goals becomes built-in.

Sustainable design

Close-up of a wooden stool with a blue and gray patterned fabric cushion on top.

Frequently asked questions.

From passenger ferry interiors and cruise ship environments to specialist marine spaces, we support projects that need to balance passenger experience, brand consistency and marine-grade performance. Clients include Brittany Ferries, Mersey Ferries and P&O Ferries.

We design interiors that meet the technical requirements of marine environments while still feeling considered, comfortable and on brand. Materials, finishes, fixtures and layouts are selected with safety, durability, weight, maintenance and passenger experience in mind.

Revenue-focused areas such as bars, retail outlets and food and beverage spaces need to be easy to find, easy to understand and easy to use. We consider passenger flow, sightlines, layout, product presentation and customer communications to help turn onboard footfall into spend.

Yes. We can review how passengers move between key onboard destinations and identify where congestion, confusion or missed opportunities may be affecting the journey. From signage and wayfinding to layout and communication, we help make navigation clearer, more intuitive and more consistent with the brand.

Every project follows our FLEX process - a five-stage methodology covering Discover, Design, Develop, Deliver and Drive. It's designed to surface the right questions early, build stakeholder alignment, and maintain momentum from brief to opening. We offer a discounted discovery workshop as a low-commitment starting point for clients who want to scope a project before committing to a full engagement.

Yes. We can stay involved through delivery to help protect the original design intent and support a smoother process on site. This includes working with project managers, suppliers and contractors across interiors, graphics, signage and guest-facing communications, so the finished space reflects the agreed concept, quality standards and commercial objectives.

News & insights

View all

Customer-centric design: the value of experiencing the customer journey

Designing the interior for the new Mersey Ferry

Brittany Ferries onboard communications design

Enhancing onboard communications with Brittany Ferries

Let's talk.

Not sure exactly what you need yet? That's fine - most good conversations start that way. Tell us where you are and what feels like it needs to change, and we'll help you work out the best way forward.

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