Tag Archives: river cruise

Crystal Cruises announces massive expansion plan

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Crystal Cruise’s Dreamliner

By Hollie-Rae Merrick

Crystal Cruises has announced a massive expansion plan which includes three new ocean ships and the line’s entry into yachting and the growing river cruise market.

The luxury line, which currently operates just two ships, today announced that over the next three years it would introduce new ships, a yacht and a plane.

Crystal chief executive and president Edie Rodriguez has signed a letter of intent with a German shipyard to build three all-suite vessels.

Rodriguez said: “We continue to think bigger, aiming to create unparalleled luxury experiences and adventures for our loyal and new guests, who – like Crystal – continue to seek broader horizons and new perspectives on the world.”

“We are ecstatic to continue pioneering new areas of luxury travel. Crystal’s newly expanded fleet will truly be travellers’ passport to virtually the entire world.”

Crystal chairman Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay said: “Our intent is to make Crystal Cruises the core of what will become the world’s premier luxury hospitality and lifestyle brand portfolio, not only for the immediate future but for years to come.”

The ships will carry rubber zodiac boats for expedition style cruising and the three builds will also be designed with polar ice-rated hulls to allow them to travel in the Arctic and Antarctica.

The first all-suite, all balcony ocean ship, which is being built at the Lloyd Werft shipyard, is expected for completion in late 2018 and will accommodate 1,000 guests.

Tan Sri Lim added: “Our vision and revolutionary plans for Crystal’s ocean vessels requires us to partner with a premium shipyard that has the expertise and resources to deliver the ‘Crystal Exclusive Class’.

“Lloyd Werft is synonymous with successful world-class new builds and luxury mega yachts, including Luna, the second largest expedition private yacht in the world, measuring at 337 feet long.”

Each ship will have 48 residences on board and travellers will be able to buy the residences as a second home. Those guests will have access to an exclusive restaurant and reception, as well as other facilities which are yet to be announced.

The line will also enter the river cruise sector in 2017 with two custom-built ships. The ships will operate under the new brand Crystal River Cruises.

In addition, Crystal will also gain a new 62-passenger yacht this December. The yacht, called Crystal Esprit, will have a 32-foot long boat for zodiacs, jet skis, kayaks and a two-person submarine. This brand will be called Crystal Yacht Cruises and Rodriguez hopes to add more yachts to the fleet eventually.

The yacht will sail around the Seychelles, Dubai and the Adriatic Coast between 2016 and early 2018, visiting the likes of Croatia, Venice, Montenegro and Greece.

The expansion of Crystal, which comes four months after Genting Hong Kong purchased Crystal from Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, also includes the plan to acquire a 60-passenger Boeing 787 under the new Crystal Luxury Air banner.

For solo river cruisers, strength in numbers

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In the past, passengers traveling alone were often seen as a bit of a liability — one passenger in one stateroom is definitely much less financially viable than filling ships with two people in each cabin.

Enter the single supplement, that nagging fee that solo travelers often have to pay to compensate for their economic inefficiency, which can cost as much as double the per-person cost of two people traveling together in one cabin. It is an unfortunate, but often necessary, single traveler tax.

Michelle Baran
Michelle Baran

But one by one, as the number of solo river cruisers continues to increase and as river cruise capacity balloons creating greater competition between the river cruise lines, solo passengers’ cumulative buying power is beginning to hold some sway, and river cruise companies are responding by adding more departures with waived single supplements.

“It is extremely important that we continue offering programs specifically for solo travelers … without any additional costs or sacrifice,” said Kristin Karst, executive vice president of AmaWaterways, which recently announced that it will now have a limited number of base category (lower deck, category D and E cabins, which range from 160 to 170 square feet and have a fixed window), double-occupancy staterooms with no single supplement available on all of its 2015 and 2016 sailings. “We continue to see high demand in this fast-growing market.”

Additionally, Ama has four vessels that have two single cabins onboard with French balconies, and two vessels that have one single cabin with a fixed window onboard, all of which are 140-square-foot cabins with one twin bed.

Other river cruise lines have been increasing their offers for solo travelers as well.

Uniworld, which says that 10% of its customer base is made up of solo travelers, currently waives the single supplement on more than 80 departures — 54 in 2015 and 29 in 2016 — including on river cruises on the Rhine and Danube as well as in France, Italy and Russia. Uniworld’s waived single supplement offers are inventory controlled and as such, availability changes throughout the season.

Thus far, 20% of Uniworld’s 2015 Europe sailings had or will have a waived single supplement offer. These offers are not available for suites, but is otherwise not restricted to specific cabin categories.

For 2015, Tauck eliminated the single supplement on its lower deck, Category 1 cabins on its ships in Europe, something the company has been doing since 2013. While the program itself isn’t new, each year Tauck continues to sell out of the Category 1 cabins for solo travelers despite the fact that the company’s fleet has grown by 75% (from four ships to seven) since 2013.

In addition, Tauck this year reduced the single supplement by up to $1,000 for solo travelers booking Category 4 and 5 cabins on 37 departures of 15 different river cruise itineraries.

Avalon Waterways, Scenic and Emerald Waterways all feature reduced and waived single supplements for solo travelers as well.

So, wave your lone traveler flag high and proud, solos! It would appear you are no longer a liability but rather a hot commodity, and river cruise lines with their ever growing number of cabins to fill are vying for your business, one solo traveler at a time.

Piggybacking on the river boom

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Craigslist

By Michelle Baran
Do you ever find yourself, as I often do, reflecting about a seemingly simple concept that has become incredibly successful (like Craigslist, the beyond basic classifieds website now worth hundreds of millions of dollars), and say to yourself, “Drats! Now why didn’t I think of that?!”

As the river cruise market continues to boom, some in the travel industry might be feeling that very sentiment about river cruising. They might have a little case of river cruise envy as it were — “If only I had thought to start building riverboats several years ago,” the regretful might muse.

Michelle Baran
Michelle Baran

But rather than bemoan the fact that they aren’t among the pioneering companies that built up the river cruising market, several factions of the travel industry have instead been working to benefit from the myriad of business opportunities that have arisen in light of the the river cruise industry’s success, and their piggybacking strategy is working.

For instance, the wholesale tour operator Avanti Destinations has been promoting its customizable FIT offerings as pre- and post-cruise city-stays that agents can tack onto a river cruise to increase their earnings.

“We encourage agents to ask their cruise clients about adding extra days — or even a week — to their itinerary,” said Harry Dalgaard, president and founder of Avanti.

“We’ve had clients, for example, who start with a Danube cruise, add a few nights in Vienna, continue on to Salzburg and then head to Florence, the Tuscan countryside and Rome before returning home,” he added.

The result is that Avanti is seeing big booking windfalls in destinations linked to river cruising. In the past year, the company has seen bookings for Bordeaux and Lyon in France increase 85% and 100%, respectively; bookings for Budapest, Hungary, have grown 30%; and for Nuremberg, Germany, bookings have jumped a whopping 175%.

Consequently, Avanti has developed new pre- and post-cruise suggested itineraries geared specifically toward river cruisers, including a three-day Bordeaux package (from $725 per person), a three-day Amsterdam itinerary (from $595 per person), a three-day Nuremberg package (from $329 per person), and a three-day Vienna package (from $515 per person).

Travel agents too are getting in on the action. Several years ago, it was difficult to find any agents that were dedicated solely to the river cruise market or who knew very much about it. But today, there is a growing roster of river cruise specialists, including several that have been featured in Travel Weekly, that have built up an entire agency business and/or website focused only on river cruising.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you had the good idea in the first place. What matters is whether you can make someone else’s good idea work in your favor. The river cruise industry isn’t just one business, it is a ripple effect of businesses and opportunities for those who choose to ride the wake.