He's the man who delivered Oprah Winfrey's 'O' Magazine – and its 2.4 million subscriber base – to the Holland America Line last year, in the form of a tie-up deal where Winfrey and HAL conduct co-hosted cruises everywhere from Alaska to the Bahamas.

Now the President of the Holland America Line, Orlando Ashford, has his sights set even higher for the 145-year-old cruise company, the second oldest cruise line in the world behind Cunard.

Ask Ashford if he's signed up Oprah's close friends Barack and Michelle Obama for a HAL cruise yet, and he doesn't miss a beat. "Oh don't you worry – I'm working on it. I'm definitely working on it."

Seattle-based Ashford has been in Sydney over the past week as the southern hemisphere cruise season gets underway, ahead of flying to Venice next week to collect his brand new 2666-passenger ship, Nieuw Statendam, with Winfrey recently named as the ship's godmother.

While Niew Statendam will do a few transatlantic crossings next year, along with sailings in the Caribbean and Baltic, it will also be deployed on the evergreen "Best of the Mediterranean" route, still the world's most popular cruise destination despite the chronic overcrowding.

Ashford reports that HAL has increased its ship capacity in the Mediterranean by 40 per cent next year due to demand. Australia is HAL's second biggest country market source behind the United States, and Australians' most popular cruise destinations with HAL are Europe, Alaska, Australia and Asia. "In terms of Europe, that's basically the Med and the Baltic," he says.

Reference the problems of overtourism and environmental issues generated by having ships lined up cheek-by-jowl in the "marquee ports" of Venice, Rome, Barcelona and Istanbul, and Ashford is refreshingly candid.

"It's a challenge – it's something we have to manage and be sensitive to – and it's important to get that balance right between popularity and spacing out delivery; we need to ensure that we spread the tourism out," he says.

Other lines report a similar theme. Regent Seven Seas Cruises is basing its luxurious ship Seven Seas Explorer in the Baltics over the summer months of 2019 in a nod to the fact it has become "just as popular as the Mediterranean," says the line's Vice President of Sales for Australia and New Zealand, Lisa Pile.

Pile reports less-tourist dense countries like Egypt, Israel and Turkey are also proving to be hot itineraries for 2019 – as is Cuba.

Norwegian Cruise Line's VP for sales in Australia and New Zealand, Nicole Costantin, agrees "while the Mediterranean and the South Pacific are expected to remain perennial favourites, we're starting to see a shift towards more exotic ports of call like Cuba".

Hawaii, Alaska and the Baltics are also in demand for Norwegian.

"It's important for cruise lines that we don't rest on our laurels," Ashford says. We have to spread our footprint out across different ports. We can't all turn up at the same destination at the same time – that's when you get in conflict with the locals because you've overwhelmed them."

To fight this, HAL is promoting the concept of encouraging passengers to explore popular cities through "multiple lenses", so they're not all converging on the city's headline cathedral on the same day. "There are so many lenses through which you can explore a city, including through photography, food, ruins and underground jazz music," Ashford says.

In Australia, HAL has added 12 new regional ports it's never before visited to spread out the spend, including Port Hedland, Gladstone and Bunbury.

"Because our ships are mid-sized and we're trying to broaden out what our passengers do in port, I think that's working in our favour," he says. "For those brands that have really large ships – that are popping into the popular cities to do the traditional excursions, that's where your conflict comes into play with locals.

"We're not perfect," Ashford shrugs, "but we're very very good, and we're always improving."