Tag Archives: Crystal Cruises

Don’t shake hands with the captain!

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Cruise ships said to have banned greeting because of fears contagious stomach viruses could be passed on

  • Cruise ship captains have been warned against shaking hands on deck
  • It is feared that shaking hands can pass on the infectious Norovirus
  • Crystal Cruises admitted the new rule was designed to prevent disease
  • The company said two of their boats were hit by Norovirus since 2008

Dining at the captain’s table is, for the lucky few, perhaps the glamorous highlight of a luxury cruise.

But having donned your dickie bow for the big night, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t stretch out a gold-braided arm in greeting.

For some cruise ships have banned passengers from shaking hands with the captain amid fears over highly contagious stomach viruses being passed on.

On-board outbreaks of norovirus have turned many a cruise into a nightmare for holidaymakers, leaving them suffering chronic vomiting and diarrhoea.

The bid to prevent it being passed to captains at dinners, cocktail parties and receptions was noted by Margaret Thatcher’s official biographer Charles Moore when he went on his first cruise recently.

Writing in The Spectator magazine about his time on board the £225 million, 1,070-passenger Crystal Serenity on a 12 day, £3,700 per person cruise from Lisbon to London via the west coast of France, he said: ‘Every effort was made to look after us courteously. Modern standards, however, put things under some strain. ‘As our voyage neared its end, the daily ship newspaper, Reflections, delivered to the door of our cabin (‘stateroom’) said: ‘All guests are cordially invited to join Captain Birger J Vorland and Crystal Society Hostess Isabell Wagner in the Palm Court at 7.45pm.

‘While the captain is pleased to meet you, he and the other staff receiving you refrain from shaking hands in order to provide the most effective preventative sanitary measures’.’

Yesterday a Crystal Cruises spokesman said: ‘It used to be, back in the day, that the captain would shake everyone’s hand. But because norovirus is spread so easily it’s just standard now that when the captains are greeting lots of people they don’t shake hands.

‘They are not being rude, it’s a preventative measure. It’s been the case on our two ships since at least 2008.’

Whether or not passengers can shake hands with the captain is down to individual cruise lines, say the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA).

A Cunard spokesman said: ‘While I was on Queen Mary 2 last week the captain shook hands with passengers attending the many cocktail parties that were held.’

A CLIA spokesman insisted norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships are uncommon, affecting ‘just 1 out of every 12,000 cruise passengers’.

He said: ‘You are 750 times more likely to get norovirus on land than on a cruise ship.’

Standard procedures for CLIA cruise lines to follow when a guest on board is suspected of contracting the gastrointestinal illness include regularly sanitizing door handles, railings and elevator buttons, providing hand sanitizers to passengers during their cruise, and sending public health specialists as well as additional medical personnel to ships as required.

The CLIA spokesman said: ‘Norovirus can remain viable on hands for hours thereby giving hands the potential to spread the infection both directly and indirectly. ‘Hand washing is therefore the single most important procedure for preventing the spread of infection.’

Should river lines be worried about Crystal?

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By Michelle Baran

Throughout the last several years of seemingly unstoppable growth in the river cruise market, ocean cruise lines have resisted getting in on the river action, a segment of the cruise market that, while clearly very popular, represents entirely different economics of scale (in other words, much lower passenger volumes) than ocean cruising.

So when Crystal Cruises announced a massive expansion initiative, including plans for two new river cruise vessels, it effectively became the first ocean line to cross into the river world.

Until the Crystal announcement, the only significant crossover in Europe had been in the opposite direction: river cruise heavyweight Viking Cruises launched its first ocean-going vessel this year (there are several smaller scale examples, such as Haimark, which has both river cruise vessels and a coastal cruise vessel, as well as the now-defunct Peter Deilmann Cruises and Cruise West, both of which dabbled in river and coastal cruising). And Crystal has been involved on the rivers before, via a marketing partnership with AmaWaterways.

Crystal hasn’t revealed much detail about the river cruise piece of its ocean-yacht-river-jet expansion plan. Lloyd Werft, the German shipyard that will construct Crystal’s new ocean ships, is also building two luxury, Crystal-branded river cruise vessels that will operate in Europe. (Crystal CEO Edie Rodriguez told Travel Weekly’s Tom Stieghorst that Crystal will reveal additional information about its river cruise product at a later date for competitive reasons.)

Looking at all of this, should river cruise lines be somewhat nervous? Could Crystal entering the river cruise business put a dent into the all the hard work they’ve put into creating, growing and developing the market these past years?

Well, Crystal still has to fit those plans into the same 38-by-410-foot dimensions that all river cruise vessels are limited to, due to the locks and bridges along Europe’s inland waterways. In that regard, Crystal will be up against the same innovation challenges the river lines have been grappling with through these growth years: how to maximize space and onboard offerings when square footage is so limited.

Additionally, for now at least, it’s only talking about two vessels, a tiny fraction of the overall river cruise inventory in Europe.

But under its new ownership of Genting Hong Kong, which clearly has ambitious plans for the company, Crystal could have enough resources at its fingertips to at least make some waves in the river cruise market, both from a hardware as well as from a marketing point of view.

“I think Crystal is doing a very smart thing,” said Donald Baasch of American Canyon, Calif.-based LastCallCruises. “They might as well make money on their customers instead of letting someone else have them, especially if they believe that a lot of them will inevitably want to try a river cruise.”

So, all told, surely the highly competitive river cruise industry has its eye on Crystal’s plans, but I doubt they are shaking in their boots quite yet.

Virgin Cruises tasked with offering distinctive experience on smaller ships

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Virgin Cruise Concept Drawing.

Virgin Cruises’ decision to order ships that are smaller than those commissioned recently by its future competitors has prompted questions about whether it will have enough room to fashion a distinctive onboard experience.

The line, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group business empire, in June ordered three ships from the Fincantieri shipyard for delivery after 2020, when it plans to launch weekly Caribbean cruises.

The ships will each be about 110,000 gross tons and carry 2,860 passengers at double capacity, Branson revealed at an appearance in Miami last month along with Virgin executives.

That capacity is far less than recent orders, for example, for as much as 6,000 passengers for Carnival Corp.’s Aida Cruises brand in Germany, 5,400 for Royal Caribbean International, 4,500 for MSC Cruises, 4,200 for Norwegian Cruise Line and 3,954 for Carnival Cruise Line.

All those lines sail at least one ship from Miami, the homeport where Branson said Virgin will launch its line.

When it comes to setting prices, larger ships provide economies of scale that can help reduce fares while still generating profits.

“Virgin is in a very difficult position to differentiate themselves from everybody else. The key for their success is how they differentiate their onboard product.” — Art Rodney, Crystal Cruises founder

Tom McAlpin, president and CEO of Virgin Cruises, said that while pricing has not been disclosed, it will likely be above the cheapest fares advertised for seven-day itineraries.

“We’re not going to be a budget brand,” McAlpin said in an interview. “What Virgin has done in the past has been to give you a better experience at the same price point.”

To do that, it helps to have a generous amount of public space to work with. Virgin has not disclosed its onboard activities or designs yet but has emphasized that it will stand apart from the pack.

A key measure for new ships is the space ratio, which divides gross tonnage into the number of passengers carried. The higher the ratio, the more room for larger cabins and public spaces.

Mark Conroy, who helped design several ships as president of Regent Seven Seas Cruises in the 1990s, said the key question is how big the cabins will be on Virgin Cruises.

“There is only so much square footage, particularly outside space, that needs to be divided between technical space, public spaces and staterooms,” Conroy said. “The technical space is pretty standardized, so then it becomes a balancing act between public space and suites and cabins. The larger you make the suites/cabins, the less space you have for public room.”

Art Rodney, one of the founders of Crystal Cruises, said that at 38.5, the Virgin ship’s space ratio is “no better than and in some cases worse than other large ships,” such as the MSC Divina or Royal Princess, both of which have space ratios of 40.

“Virgin is in a very difficult position to differentiate themselves from everybody else,” Rodney said. “The key for their success is how they differentiate their onboard product.”

McAlpin agreed, saying the “different programmatic elements” will set Virgin apart.

He said the ships are still in the design phase and urged potential passengers to weigh in on Virgin’s website to say what they would want to see and do on a Virgin vessel.

But McAlpin also said that if the ship is smaller than its competitors, that will make it different too.

“If everyone out there is building ships of one size and you have a different size, it does provide a level of differentiation,” he said.

McAlpin cited consumer research as the main factor in deciding how big to build. He said those surveyed expressed concerns about being on a mega ship with thousands of fellow passengers.

“We believe a slightly smaller ship gives us a good platform,” McAlpin said. “It’s big enough to provide us with a variety of experiences but small enough to provide a more intimate atmosphere.”