Viking Cruises christened its first new ship in Bergen, Norway, in a ceremony that attracted thousands on the nation’s Constitution Day.
The May 17 christening marks the formal debut of the 930-passenger Viking Star, which has been sailing with passengers since early April.
“We believe the arrival of Viking Star signals a new era in destination-focused cruising, and I could not be more proud that she will call my favorite city in the world home,” said Viking Chairman Torstein Hagen, who got his start in the cruise business four decades ago in Bergen.
The city’s mayor, Trude Drevland, served as ceremonial godmother and offered a blessing of good fortune and safe sailing for the 47,800-gross-ton ship.
All in the family: Viking ocean ship resembles its river sisters
Like the river ships, Viking Star has a simple but impressively wide grand staircase that dominates a central atrium. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
ABOARD THE VIKING STAR — Anyone who has traveled the rivers of Europe on Viking River Cruises would be curious about how company’s new ocean-going vessel stacks up.
It is easy to see the family resemblance between the two types of Viking ships.
Viking’s standard Longship vessels have white exteriors and spare, contemporary interiors designed with a Northern European sensibility that is comfortable, clean and unfussy.
Viking Star, which left Istanbul on Sunday on the first leg of a 50-night cruise to Stockholm, has much the same look and feel although displayed on a much larger canvas.
Where Viking’s river ships have two-and-a-half decks of passenger cabins, the ocean ship has six, giving it the capacity to carry 930 passengers, up from 190 on a river vessel.
The Star has 10 decks overall, giving it more and bigger public rooms than the river ships, and many extras such as a theater, two cinemas, a spa, a gym and a two pools, none of which are part of the Viking river brand.
But the look and feel of the two types of ships conform to the tastes of Viking Cruises Chairman Torstein Hagen, who has built the Viking brand into a powerhouse in river cruising.
Viking Star’s look bears the same Scandinavian modern influence seen in the river ships. The colors are muted and neutral, with blues and browns predominating. Tans, beiges, taupes and off-white shades are also in evidence.
Guests can sample a variety of regional specialties at the World Cafe. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
Cabins and public spaces are trimmed in a blonde wood, with touches of leather such as the covering for the staircase handrails. Chandeliers and light fixtures are modern, but not aggressively so.
Art pieces on the ship are also contemporary, but in a way that doesn’t make them stand apart from the overall design. Some have Viking references, such as the staircase landing’s centerpieces based on tapestries depicting the Norman invasion of England in 1053.
Like the river ships, Viking Star has a simple but impressively wide grand staircase that dominates a central atrium. The one on Viking Star sets off a very large LED screen that offers changing images, such as one of the spiral decorative prow of an medieval Viking Longship.
There are decorative horizontal racks of light wood that surround the elevators on each deck.
The main public spaces on Deck 7 of the ship benefit from a lot of glass that give them an airy and spacious feel, similar to the feel of the Longship atrium that is partly roofed in glass.
Viking Star’s main restaurant has comfortable, upholstered chairs and the neutral colors that are also reminiscent of the dining area on the river ships. The ship’s buffet restaurant has an indoor/outdoor capacity with an Aquavit Terrace that accommodates al fresco dining.
As on the river ships, the tile floors in the bathrooms on Viking Star are heated. The patterns in the stone surfaces decorating the bathroom are barely discernable. The basins are rectangular and white, and the fixtures are squared-off and contemporary.
One of the few elaborate touches is a sort of corded webbing that covers the windows along the exterior of the atrium. There is also a filigree screen here and there, such as the one that forms the backing for the stage by the main pool on Deck 7.
All in all, the Viking Star is a more spacious and expanded version of the design formula that has worked well for Viking Cruises for the past 20 years on the inland waterways of Europe.
It’s no big secret that so much in the travel industry is about relationships — relationships between agents and their clients, relationships between suppliers and agents, relationships between suppliers and vendors.
Indeed, relationships are the building blocks that create the foundation for the high-touch world of travel.
So, perhaps it should come as little surprise that on the last evening of the christening cruise for Avalon Waterways’ freshly minted Avalon Tapestry II, when the travel agents at my dinner table were asked by consumer press why they choose to sell certain river cruise lines over others, they responded, “It’s all about relationships.”
Initially, the answer was a bit disappointing to me. I was hoping for some real insight into how the agents choose between the river cruise lines, something more about the vessels themselves or about the overall experience that sets the companies apart. But saying that they choose based on “relationships” felt a bit like a copout; like code for better commissions or enhanced perks for their clients.
Michelle Baran
But when I thought about it a bit more, I realized that in a segment of the travel industry that is only just now starting to see more differentiation between the players involved, it can still prove challenging at times to explain what sets one company’s product apart from another. The fact that Avalon has positioned the majority of the beds in its cabins facing towards the balcony; that Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection has invested heavily in its extravagant exteriors; that Viking River Cruises is churning out sleek vessels at hard to beat prices; that AmaWaterways is pushing the themed river cruise envelope; or that Tauck has reinvented the lower deck cabin — these nuances might sway some, but for others these factors might still not seem like explanation enough for why they should book one line over another. Enter relationships.
The two agents at the table worked for two different host agencies that had both selected Viking and Avalon as preferred suppliers, so the decision to book more customers with those river cruises lines had already been pre-selected for them. But what dawned on me after the conversation is that while it’s definitely important for river cruise lines to continue to help us better understand and embrace their tangible differences, perhaps their most important differentiator is just that, relationships — including those between the river cruise lines and their agent partners, group travel leaders, tour operators, and of course their customers. And it will be how they continue to initiate those relationships and what they do to maintain them that will likely decide how the game plays out in the long-term.
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