With Louis Cruise Lines having now raised the Greek flag over eight of its cruise ships, this Greek-Cypriot-owned company has actually become the largest employer of Greek merchant seafarers. Louis now owns thirteen cruise ships, of which it operates seven for its own account and four for Thomson Cruises while its two recent purchases still operate for Norwegian Cruise Line. 
The Greeks, with all the islands of the Aegean, have always been an important part of passenger shipping. The Goulandris-owned Greek Line, founded in 1939, introduced the first Greek newbuilding, Olympia, in 1953, and lasted until a fuel crisis put the line out of business in 1975. Olympia still sails today, as Regal Empress on short cruises from Port Everglades to the Bahamas. But in the meantime the face of Greek cruise shipping has changed completely.
The Rise, Demise and Rise Again of Greek Cruising
The Greeks are probably best known for having introduced modern cruising to the Mediterranean in the 1950s. But of the family names involved – Potamianos, Kavounides, Efthymiades, Nomikos, Typaldos, Chandris, Panagopoulis – only one is still active today.
Although Celebrity Cruises sprung from the Chandris family, who sold the line to Royal Caribbean in 1997, its ships had never flown the Greek flag. They still today carry the letter X for “chi” and most still have Greek masters and officers.
That sale was not a loss to Greek shipping – the real demise came about in 2004, when not one but two Greek-owned cruise lines, Festival Cruises, with offices in Piraeus and Genoa, and Piraeus-based Royal Olympic Cruises, went out of business. Both had built new ships for the trade and it was these that many thought brought them into financial difficulty. After having ships arrested at different ports around the world, both disappeared within a few months.
Things could have been different. Carnival Corporation had taken control of Epirotiki Lines in 1994, but then withdrew when Epirotiki and Sun Lines agreed to merge into Royal Olympic in 1995. Louis Cruise Lines then took a stake in Royal Olympic in 1999 but later walked away. In May 2000, meanwhile, P&O agreed to buy Festival Cruises for $400 million, but it abandoned this plan in March 2001 after a fall in its stock price as P&O Cruises demerged from P&O. Either of these outcomes would have resulted in their absorption into an international conglomerate, the same one today as it turns out. As Festival and Royal Olympic went out of business their ships were acquired by other operators.
Thereafter, Golden Sun Cruises, today operating as Monarch Classic Cruises, and Larnaka-based Louis Cruise Lines stepped into the breach, especially in the local cruise market from Piraeus. Golden Sun was Greek but Louis Cruise Lines, which had once owned Royal Olympic together with the Potamianos family, were Greek-Cypriot. Their own answer was to form Louis Hellenic Cruises in March 2005, and transfer ships into the Greek flag to operate cruises not only from Piraeus but also from Genoa, where it opened a branch office. Assisting this move into Greek flag was George Stathopoulos, a Greek-born cruise executive who had previously worked for all of Festival, Celebrity and Royal Olympic.
Louis Cruise Lines
Louis Cruise Lines itself is a subsidiary of the Cyprus-based tourism and travel group Louis Group PLC, founded in 1935. It purchased its first ship in 1985 and today operates under the Louis Cruise Lines name. Of the thirteen ships it owns today, it operates seven under its own name, on 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 16-day cruises, and four under charter to Thomson Cruises.
Four Greek-flag ships, the 790-lower-berth Aegean Pearl, 1,050-berth Aquamarine, 728-berth Orient Queen and 960-berth Cristal, its newest, all operate from Piraeus, while from the Cypriot port of Limassol it operates the Greek-flag 508-passenger Ivory and the 576-berth Marshall Islands-registered Sapphire. The Greek-flag Orient Queen and the 748-berth Cypriot-flag Coral meanwhile offer departures from both Genoa and Marseilles.
Two more Greek-flag ships, the 486-berth Calypso and the 990-berth Emerald, presently operate for Thomson Cruises, as do the Cypriot-registered 1,450-berth Thomson Destiny and 1,254-berth Thomson Spirit. Thomson Majesty, meanwhile, sister ship to the Thomson Spirit, is owned by Holland America and managed for Thomson by Columbia Ship Management of Limassol. Louis’s own ship management company, Louis Shipmanagement Ltd, being based in Athens, further cements its Greek link.
Sale & Purchase
As mentioned in this column on April 28, Louis have recently acquired the 1,750-berth Norwegian Dream and 1,460-berth Norwegian Majesty from NCL and will charter them back until November 2008 and December 2009, respectively. The Dream will be the first to come free and although her future deployment has not yet been announced, the Emerald is doing her last season for Thomson, so she may well find employment there. With the acquisition of these ships, Louis has decided to retire two of its older ships.
After 22 years carrying 1.3 million passengers from Limassol to the Eastern Mediterranean, Louis’s flagship Princesa Marissa (628 lower berths), its first acquisition, is now to be sold as fleet renewal goes ahead. Princesa Marissa was named after the chairman’s daughter and played a fundamental role in placing Cyprus on the cruising map, while Louis Cruise Lines slowly grew to be the fifth largest cruise operator in the world. Louis is also disposing of the 600-berth Serenade, once well-known in the French market as Mermoz.
Monarch Classic Cruises
Back in Piraeus, Monarch Classic Cruises, formed by Andreas Potamianos and the Kollakis Group (Majestic International Cruises) in 2006, now operates two 800-passenger Portuguese-registered ships, Blue Monarch and Ocean Countess, both formerly Royal Olympic ships, in the 3-, 4-, 7 and 14-day cruise market from Piraeus.
As much of Monarch’s business comes from America, it has joined the US-based Niche Cruise Marketing Alliance and opened an office in New York that offers fixed fares in US dollars to American travellers.
Majestic International also own the Portuguese-registered Ocean Majesty, which have been operating in the UK charter market. The irony here is that while Louis now has eight Greek-flag ships, its chief competitor from Piraeus now operates under Portuguese flag.
Other Greeks
Some other Greeks also continue in the business of owning cruise ships while chartering them out to other operators, three of these in Germany. Leonardo Shipping of Piraeus owns the 780-berth Mona Lisa, which is now chartered to Lord Nelson Seereisen of Erkelenz, near Cologne, while Athens-based Enterprises Shipping & Trading has the 650-berth Delphin Voyager on to Delphin Kreuzfahrten of Offenbach. And this spring, Global Cruise Lines of Piraeus acquired Orient Line’s 848-berth Marco Polo, which now operates under charter to Transocean Tours of Bremen.
Another Greek-Cypriot, Stelios Haji-Iouannu, whose father owned the Piraeus-based Troodos Shipping Co Ltd, and who formed his own Athens-based Stelmar Shipping in 1992, founded easyJet in 1995. Last month, his easyCruise put into service his second cruise ship, the 600-passenger Maltese-flag EasyCruise Life, now cruising the Greek Islands. Although EasyCruise Life was refitted in Greece, an earlier agreement between EasyCruise and Louis to build four new mid-size cruise ships in a Greek shipyard has fallen into abeyance.
One shipowner who is Greek is George Potamianos, a relative of the Piraeus family who moved from Greece to Lisbon in 1985 and now heads up Classic International Cruises. This company operates five cruise ships (two of which were once the Greek-owned Danae and Daphne) under Portuguese flag. Although run from Lisbon, the head company, Arcalia Shipping Co Ltd, is still based in Cyprus.
The Future?
With a change in the Greek coasting regulations and in Greek manning laws, the Greek flag has all of a sudden become more attractive to at least one operator.
Whereas Festival did not use the Greek flag at all, Royal Olympic did but had looked at putting their newbuildings under Dutch flag. Obviously, Greece joining the European Union has caused some change here and given Greek maritime circles to have second thoughts about their previous cabotage laws, at least as far as cruise ships are concerned. But the number of Portuguese-flag cruise ships with Greek connections is also quite remarkable.
(Source: By Mark Tré – Cybercruises.com)
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Expedition Cruising – Is Antarctica Getting Too Crowded?
More Cruisers for Antarctica
During the 2006/07 Antarctic season 9,693 Americans, 4,518 Brits, 4,082 Germans and 2,756 Australians landed in Antarctica out of a total of 29,576. The 2007/08 total is expected to be around 34,000. With Silversea recently introducing its Prince Albert II, Lindblad Expeditions National Geographic Explorer and GAP Adventures buying a ship to replace its own Explorer, lost in the Antarctic last November, there is much new for visitors to the Antarctic.
New money is also going into the expedition business and main line cruise operators are planning a “scenic” invasion that could see close to 50,000 tourists sail to the seventh continent next year. But one question remains. What if there is an accident?
New Expedition Ships
Last week brought news that GAP Adventures of Toronto had purchased the 345-foot Viking Line ferry Alandsfarjan for $2.6 million. GAP intends to convert the 6,172-ton Ice Class 1B Swedish ferry, into an expedition ship that will replace its ill-fated 108-passenger Explorer, lost in Antarctic waters in November.
This year, GAP chartered the 98-passenger Russian ship Polaris, a near-sister to the original Explorer, as a stop-gap measure. As presently configured with bow and stern doors and car decks, as well as no major overnight accommodation, the new 1972-built acquisition will need some major conversion work before she can go into service as an expedition ship.
Meanwhile, the inaugural voyage of Silversea Cruises’ first expedition ship, the 120-passenger Prince Albert II, has left Londonfor islands of the Atlantic, Norway and Spitsbergen.
Acquired last year from Sembawang Shipyards in Singapore, the Ice Class 1A 6,072-ton Prince Albert II was previously Society Expeditions’ rather luxurious World Discoverer II, but has lain idle since that company went out of business five years ago. Two weeks after Prince Albert II leaves London, Lindblad Expeditions’ new Ice Class 1A 148-guest National Geographic Explorer enters service.
Formerly Hurtigruten’s 6,167-ton Lyngen, this 1982-built coastal mail boat, has been converted in Las Palmas into a much-reinforced 350-foot expedition ship, left her old home port of Bergen on June 26 for her own first voyage, to the Norwegian fjords and Spitsbergen.
Meanwhile, Oceanwide Expeditions of the Netherlands is planning to convert the former 2,977-ton Dutch oceanographic ship Tydeman into the 296-foot expedition ship Plancius, full details of which have not yet been announced. For 2008 and 2009, however, they will use the 84-passenger chartered Chilean vessel Antarctic Dream.
Corporate Changes
A lot has also happened recently in terms of the ownership of expedition companies, particularly as First Choice Holidays, the UK holiday company that is now part of Germany’s TUI, has acquired a fistful of expedition companies, not only marine but also land-based, in a move to diversify away from mainstream travel.
It started with First Choice’s £19.5 million acquisition of Melbourne-based Peregrine Adventures in November 2005, along with the operation of the 110-passenger Akademik Ioffe and Akademik Sergey Vavilov. The very next month First Choice announced the purchase of St Louis-based INTRAV, operating the 122-guest Clipper Adventurer and 128-berth Clipper Odyssey (as well as the smaller US-flag Nantucket Clipper and Yorktown Clipper, which were sold on to Cruise West).
Finally, last May, when Quark Expeditions founder Lars Wikander announced his retirement, First Choice revealed that it was also buying Connecticut-based Quark, whose fleet consisted of one owned ship, the 82-passenger Ocean Nova, and a number of chartered Russian and Ukrainian ships. These included the 120-passenger icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, the 110-berth Lyubov Orlova, the 50-passenger Akademik Shokalskiy and Professor Multanovskiy,and the 100-passenger nuclear icebreaker Yamal, which it uses for one or two voyages to the North Pole every year.
All previous operations of Peregrine and Clipper have now been brought together under Quark, which has gained new offices in Melbourne and St Louis.
By summer, Quark sublets the Lyubov Orlova to Cruise North Expeditions of Toronto, which offers cruises from Kuujjuaq, Quebec, (formerly Fort Chimo) to Baffin Island and Hudson Bay.
Cruise North is owned by Makkovik Corporation, a native company, and had previously used the 66-passenger Argentine ship Ushuaia. A few days after announcing its acquisition of Quark, First Choice announced that the sale of Clipper Adventurer and Clipper Odyssey to International Shipping Partners (ISP) of Miami, but with the charter back of Clipper Adventurer for the next five Antarctic seasons. Clipper Odyssey will be used by Zegrahm Expeditions of Seattle and Noble Caledonia of London.
ISP itself has greatly expanded its own activities in the small ship sector, particularly in connection with the Clipper Group of Denmark.
It also manages the 112-passenger Island Sky for Noble Caledonia, the 60-passenger Quest for Polar Quest of Gothenburg and the 112-berth Corinthian II, which will sail the Antarctic for Travel Dynamics of New York, in addition to Quark’s Ocean Nova, a near sister of the Quest.
As well as these smaller vessels, over the past year Clipper, through ISP, has begun to acquire a number of medium-size cruise ships for charter to other operators.
Not related to Quark, but also owned by TUI, is Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, whose four-ship fleet includes two highest ice class expedition ships, the 184-guest Hanseatic and 164-berth Bremen, in the upmarket sector.
With a sale of Hapag-Lloyd AG by TUI now a possibility, its cruise operation, if not included, may soon be in need of a new name. Hapag-Lloyd will perform two Northwest Passage cruises in the summer of 2009, with Hanseatic and Bremen crossing the Canadian Arctic in opposite directions. The pair will meet in Cambridge Bay for a barbecue that will also be attended by the line’s managing director from Hamburg.
Meanwhile, Hapag-Lloyd is so heavily sold out on Antarctica departures that it raises the question of how or when it might add more capacity to fulfil this demand.
At the end of last month, it was announced that KSL Capital Partner had acquired Orion Expedition Cruises of Melbourne, who operate the 106-passenger Ice Class E3 Orion, built in Germany in 2003. The new owners said there would soon be fleet expansion by way of newbuildings and/or second-hand acquisitions.
Orion operates from Australian ports to the Antarctic, the Kimberley, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia and Asia. All these ships carry only 100 or so passengers and are equipped with zodiacs to land their passengers to observe wildlife (including seals, whales and of course the many varieties of penguins), the area’s spectacular scenery and international research stations, many of which are now historic sites.
Big Ships, Inexperienced Crews 
The Antarctic tourist season, which normally runs from November to March, has flourished in the past fifteen years, growing from around 6,500 visitors in 1997 to 30,000 in 2007, or five times in a decade.
Part of this huge growth has come from main line cruise operators that operate larger ships than the adventure companies. Beginning in 1993 with Orient Lines’ 848-passenger Marco Polo, now operating for Transocean Tours of Bremen, this grew when the 710-berth Discovery joined her in 2001 after being acquired by Voyages of Discovery.
Two newer Norwegian Hurtigruten ships, the 500-passenger Fram and 690-passenger Nordnorge have also joined this sector. These ships limit the number of passengers they carry in the Antarctic to between 350 and 400 in order to be able to perform landings. Even then, as not all passengers can be landed at one time, they must do so in stages.
Others in this category include Saga, Peter Deilmann and now Transocean.
More recently, lines such as Holland America and Princess, the big two in Alaska, have scheduled cruises to the Antarctic. These larger ships do not offer landings but something they call “scenic cruising” of the “dazzling landscape” of the Antarctic.
This year, Golden Princess carried 2,425 passengers and 1,120 crew to the Antarctic, and her sister ship Star Princess is to do the same in 2009.
Holland America’s Rotterdam, which can carry up to 1,668 passengers, also made a cruise to the Antarctic Peninsula in January. The latest to join the fray, with an announcement last month, is Celebrity Cruises, whose Celebrity Infinity, which can carry up 2,450 passengers, will perform two Antarctic cruises in 2010.
Of the upmarket cruise lines, only Crystal has sent the 960-passenger Crystal Symphony on such “scenic” cruises.
What worries people most about these ships is not just the huge numbers of souls they can carry to isolated locations and the lack of Antarctic knowledge among their officers and crews, but also the fact that the owners of these ships do not feel it is necessary to have double hulls or even ice-strengthening to navigate these waters, not to mention the risk of pollution from the heavy oil that these ships burn as opposed to the lighter diesel used by most expedition ships.
What if there is an accident?
Last year, at about 3 am on November 23, GAP Adventure’s Explorer was holed by ice near King George Island, taking on water and beginning to list.
All 154 passengers and crew were evacuated after about 5 hours in lifeboats and she sank about 15 hours later. The Explorer had been built in 1969 as Lindblad Explorer, the pioneer Antarctica expedition ship, designed for navigating these waters.
Ten years ago, at 1:30 am on December 15, 1998, Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas struck Proselyte Reef in Great Bay, St Maarten, causing a 130 by 7 foot gash in her starboard hull.
All 2,557 passengers had to be evacuated by tender and flown home after the ship started taking on water.
One of her officers at the time recently told this author that the ship would have sunk had her master not taken quick action to ground her on a nearby sandbank, something that the subsequent investigation said would take a minimum of about 12 hours. Ninety years ago, at about 2 am on October 24, 1918, Canadian Pacific’s Princess Sophia, en route from Skagway to Juneau, Alaska, grounded on Vanderbilt Reef in the Lynn Canal.
All 343 passengers and crew lost their lives 39 hours later after heavy weather prevented rescue efforts and she slipped off the reef and sank in deep water.
Lost in time, this tragedy was completely overshadowed by the end of the First World War a few days later.
In the case of Explorer, winds were not high and there was no fog at the time.
In the case of Monarch of the Seas, despite the large numbers involved, help was as near as the closest shore tender by which the ship’s passengers were rescued.
In the case of Princess Sophia, though, even though she was in isolated waters, help was at hand. But over a period of almost two days the weather prevented anyone from being rescued before she sank, taking all with her within sight of land.
As it happens, as National Geographic Explorer is in drydock at Las Palmas, her 110-berth fleetmate National Geographic Endeavour is also there, undergoing some work of her own.
She had participated along with the Nordnorge in the Explorer rescue in November. As for Nordnorge, the Explorer rescue was actually her second of the year, as in January she had been called to evacuate 294 passengers from her sister ship Nordkapp after she ran aground off Deception Island, something that forced the cancellation of the rest of her 2007 season.
And just this January, Hurtigruten gave 50% refunds to passengers of Fram, the Nordkapp‘s replacement, after her engines failed and she drifted into ice at Brown’s Bluff during her Christmas cruise to Antarctica.
After receiving ice damage to one of her lifeboats, she had to cancel her subsequent cruise as well.
As well as the natural threats of wind, weather, ice and grounding, not to mention machinery failure, there is the hazard of fire. In March 2006,Star Princess, which is scheduled to sail to Antarctica in 2009, suffered a fire in which one died and eleven were injured.
At the time, she was sailing between Grand Cayman and Jamaica and help was nearby.
But in Antarctica help can be 36 to 48 hours away across the Drake Passage, one of the roughest stretches of water in the world. To quote a cruise expert who has sent many adventurers to the Antarctic, “When Explorer sank they had just 154 people to rescue. Twenty times that many would be a catastrophe.”
To send ships to the Antarctic without double hulls, let alone any ice strengthening, is probably begging for something to happen and it might behoove the 46 nation members of the Antarctic Treaty Organization to have a look at this.
There is a saying in shipping that the more times you move something, the more chance there is of damaging it, and the same holds true of ships.
The International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), possibly in an attempt to be able to control them, has allowed the owners of larger cruise ships to become members. In an effort to do so, since 2001 it has required that ships carrying more than 500 passengers make no landings in the Antarctic.
IAATO, founded by seven private members in 1991, now consists of 104 private companies, 44 of which are full members and five of these are cruise lines.
There is a precedent that some IAATO members already have to follow at the other end of the world. A good set of regulations exists in Canada, which has its own set of rules for Arctic waters. Called the Arctic Ice Regime Shipping System, it was designed to enforce the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act of 1970.
Although the Arctic suffers from multi-year pack ice, it includes areas that have only seasonal ice and the scheme, whlle complicated, may be worth a look.
But the main question is should ships with no ice strengthening be allowed to cruise the Antarctic?
(Source: By Mark Tré – Cybercruises.com)
Increased Space on Trans-At Freighters
We are happy to announce sailings from Halifax, N.S. of MS MELFI IBERIA to the Mediterranean Sea via Cuba.
From Halifax, she sails to Havana, Naples, Leghorn, Genoa, Barcelona, and Valencia before returning to Halifax. The entire round voyage is approximately 32 days. Prices for the complete round voyage start at $5200 Canadian. Segments may be available if space permits*.
This vessel increases our capacity to three twin-bedded cabins. Each is equipped with shower, toilet, carpet, refrigerator and curtains. Supplier warns that views can be obstructed by containers if heavily loaded.
This 20,176 TDW vessel is 167.1 m long, 25 m wide and has 220 volt on-board AC current. Currency on board is US dollars. She is air conditioned and equipped with Video/TV, small pool, table tennis and darts.
Please note a Cuban tourist card is required whether going ashore or remaining aboard.
Security Restrictions:
All passengers must carry a valid Canadian or European passport.
*No sales of the segment from Halifax to Havana.
Vancouver vs Seattle: The Great West Coast Battle
While things have changed in recent years, Vancouver still handled 960,000 cruise passengers last year (this number includes both embarkations and disembarkations) and will feature 252 cruise ship calls in 2008, meanwhile, the tide has been turning for Seattle in the past decade. The American gateway anticipates 211 sailings in 2008 with about 780,000 passengers.
Vancouver Yesterday and To-day
Ever since the 1960s, when Canadian Pacific’s Princess Patricia, Canadian National’s Prince George and Alaska Cruise Lines’ Glacier Queen and Yukon Star, were joined by P&O Cruises’ first Arcadia, Vancouver had had a virtual monopoly on the Alaska cruise market.
As it enjoyed the advantage of being closer to Alaska, ships could take the Inside Passage along the British Columbia coast, make calls at Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway and other Alaskan ports and be back in Vancouver within seven days. Even Seattle-based Alaska Cruise Lines, owned by the West family, had based its two smaller ships in Vancouver. Seattle had not seen any passenger service since the Alaska Steamship Company had stopped carrying passengers in the 1950s.
While things have changed in recent years, Vancouver still handled 960,000 cruise passengers last year (this number includes both embarkations and disembarkations) and will feature 252 cruise ship calls in 2008. Lines serving Vancouver include Celebrity Cruises, Cruise West, Holland America Line, Norwegian Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, Royal Caribbean and Silversea Cruises.
Operating two cruise ship terminals, Vancouver offers three berths at downtown Canada Place and two more at Ballantyne Pier, a little to the east.
The Rise of an American Gateway
Meanwhile, the tide has been turning for Seattle in the past decade, for two reasons.
First, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, made flying less popular, provoking a trend towards what is called “homeland cruising.”
Secondly, cruise ships were getting faster and with speeds of up to 25 knots they could make it to Skagway, at the head of the Lynn Canal, and back to Seattle within seven days. Even before the events of September 11, Seattle opened its Bell Street Cruise Terminal in 1999. 
In that year, Seattle handled just six cruise ships and 6,615 passengers. By 2007, this had risen to 190 cruise ships and 781,000 passengers for Celebrity Cruises, Holland America Line, Norwegian Cruise Line, Princess Cruises and Royal Caribbean, a true revolution that cost Vancouver a great deal of business.
In 2009 Seattle will open a new cruise terminal at Pier 91, which will take the ships that more recently have been temporarily calling at Pier 30, a converted container terminal that will now revert to the container trades.
Seattle anticipates 211 sailings in 2008 with about 780,000 passengers.
This compares to 850,000 for Vancouver, down because of the shift of Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Infinity from Vancouver to Seattle, which makes for a count of about 80,000.
One-Way Alaska Cruising
One saving grace for Vancouver is that it is in Canada and ships cannot make one-way cruises between Seattle and Alaskan ports such as Seward because the US Passenger Vessel Services Act prohibits foreign-flag ships from carrying passengers in coasting trade between US ports.
This effectively gives Vancouver exclusivity in the Canada-Alaska one-way cruise business where ships turn in Alaska and make alternating northbound and southbound voyages that include ground tours to Denali and Anchorage. Ironically, included in this number is Cruise West’s Spirit of Oceanus, which is owned in Seattle but is not registered in the United States, but also the Holland America and Princess ships that operate extensive Alaska cruise-tour programmes.
The Big Alaska Lines
The two biggest lines in the Alaska trade, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line, both happen to-day to be Carnival companies. Both also operate their own railcars in Alaska and both can be traced to the activities of Seattle businessmen.
Holland America Line’s Alaska business dates back to 1947, when Seattle-based Charles West formed what became Alaska Cruise Lines. Holland America purchased 70 per cent of West’s company, by now known as Westours, in 1971 and acquired full control in 1977.
This move was significant enough for Holland America Line to change its name to Holland America Westours, a name it would keep until 2002, and even to move its headquarters from New York to Seattle in 1984 after its traditional Transatlantic and Bermuda routes had ended.
Princess Cruises, on the other hand, was formed in 1965 by Stanley MacDonald, another Seattle businessman, to operate cruises from Los Angeles to the Mexican Riviera in the winter time. In 1974, Princess Cruises, which took its name from its original Canadian Pacific charter, was purchased by P&O, which had also been operating to Alaska. P&O’s Spirit of London became Princess’s Sun Princess and P&O then added two more ships, the first Pacific Princess, the original “Love Boat,” and the first Island Princess.
Meanwhile, over the several years that followed, Charles West’s sale of his business to Holland America, he rebuilt his small ship fleet and today the company operates eight vessels in the small ship sector under chairman Dick West and newly-appointed president and CEO Dietmar Wertanzl, a man with many years experience at Crystal Cruises and Celebrity Cruises.
Recent Developments
In the past year or two, these developments at Seattle have allowed new itineraries to be tried by various lines, and particularly by Celebrity Cruises, who have begun to offer 3-4-and-5-day coastal cruises from Seattle to ports in British Columbia with Celebrity Mercury.
The same ship this year also offered four 7-day round trips from San Francisco to Astoria, Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria. Holland America’s Zaandam meanwhile embarked passengers on April 22 for a cruise to Hawaii.
The rebirth of Seattle as a passenger port has also created a number of opportunities on positioning cruises at the beginning and end of the Alaska season, usually in May and October.
In order to position ships from Los Angeles, for example, to Seattle, direct passengers cannot be booked between those two ports, but they can be booked between Los Angeles and Vancouver, and the shorter positioning cruise that follows from Vancouver to Seattle is a good way to introduce thousands of new prospects to the whole idea of cruising.
There is no question that Seattle has now made a big mark in the Alaska business, accounting for almost an equal share with Vancouver of that trade, but it is also interesting that the same lines support both ports. In fact, Princess Cruises, which started in Seattle, still bases four ships in Vancouver but only two in Seattle and almost any day there are cruise ships in Vancouver there is a representative, sometimes two, from the Holland America fleet.
(Source: By Mark Tré – Cybercruises.com)
