Cunard Line Appoints Queen Elizabeth Senior Officers

Following the appointment of Captain Christopher Wells as Master of its new Queen Elizabeth, Cunard Line has appointed four more Senior Officers who will be onboard when the ship enters service in October 2010.

Robert Howie, Hotel Manager
Scottish-born Robert Howie brings almost 25 years of experience – on land and at sea – to his new post as Hotel Manager aboard Queen Elizabeth. He held the position of Food and Beverage Manager aboard RMS Queen Mary 2 in the ocean liner’s inaugural year and was later promoted to Hotel Manager on Cunard’s flagship in 2005. Mr. Howie was also the first Hotel Manager onboard Queen Victoria when she entered service in December 2007.
As Hotel Manager,  Mr. Howie is in charge of all onboard operations: housekeeping, food and beverage, entertainment and human resources. Prior to joining Cunard, he served in senior managerial food and beverage positions for Princess Cruises – both shoreside and onboard – since 1990.

Alastair Greener, Entertainment Director
Alastair Greener from Marlborough, England has a love of both the sea and stage, characteristics that will serve him well as he prepares to join Queen Elizabeth as Entertainment Director. Mr. Greener has also served as Entertainment Director on both RMS Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2 and was the first Entertainment Director onboard Queen Victoria.
Currently, Mr. Greener is the face of the company’s very popular blog, WeAreCunard.com, which he frequently updates with all the latest news about the fleet. Through his blog he often appears on The Cruise People’s FaceBook presence. Mr. Greener is a member of the British Actors’ Union and has appeared in a wide range of film, theatre and television productions, including the BBC’s “House of Cards” and Warner Brothers’ “Black Beauty.” He was also asked to represent CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) as a media tour spokesperson.
Prior to Cunard, Cunard Line Appoints Queen Elizabeth Senior Officers
Mr. Greener joined Princess Cruises in 1997 and served on eight ships within the fleet.

Hamish Sunter, Staff Captain
Halifax-born Captain Hamish Sunter joined Cunard in 1990 as an officer in Cunard Princess, where he remained for three years. He also obtained his Master’s Certificate at this time. In 1993 he was transferred to Queen Elizabeth 2 as Junior First Officer and left that ship as Chief Officer in 1998. After two years Captain Sunter was keen to go back to sea, which he did in 2000 with P&O Cruises, sailing as First Officer on several of its ships. He returned to Cunard as Chief Officer in RMS Queen Mary 2 in October 2005. He rejoined QE2 as Staff Captain in December 2006 and has also served in that capacity onboard Queen Victoria.

Colin Black, Chief Engineer
Colin Black hales from East Lothian near Edinburgh, Scotland and joined P&O / Princess Cruises in 1990 as a CPO Mechanic onboard Royal Princess. He subsequently moved up the ranks to First Engineer prior to being given the responsibility for the newbuild of Princess Cruises’ Dawn Princess, followed by Ocean Princess. In 2001 he was based in the Southampton Office working within the newbuild department. In 2002 he moved across to P&O Cruises serving onboard Oriana, Aurora and then the new Arcadia. Colin Black’s first appointment as Chief Engineer was onboard Tahitian Princess in 2006 and her sister ship Pacific Princess.
In 2007 he was assigned as Technical Fleet Services Project Manager for Queen Victoria, thereafter taking over as Chief Engineer.

“Loyal Cunarders will be delighted to find so many familiar faces aboard our newest ship,” said Peter Shanks, president of Cunard Line. “One of our distinguishing characteristics is the number and frequency of our repeat guests, and they will truly appreciate sailing with these revered and long time Cunard staff members.”

Queen Elizabeth will feature many unique Cunard traditions linking her with her fleetmates Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria, and their predecessors, together with all the modern day luxuries Cunard’s passengers have come to expect. From the outside, her distinctive black and red livery will hint at an experience that differentiates a Cunard liner from a modern-day cruise ship. This will be most evident in the ship’s adherence to liner traditions, with elegant double and triple height public rooms on a grand scale, luxuriously endowed with rich wood panelling, intricate mosaics, hand-woven carpets, gleaming chandeliers, and cool marbles. Art Deco features will pay homage to the original RMS Queen Elizabeth.

Technorati Tags: Queen Elizabeth,Queen Elizabeth 2,QE2,QM2,Queen Mary,Cunard Princess

Boom Down Under – The End of EasyCruise? – The German Market

by Mark Tre’ – "The Cruise Examiner"
This week’s story is all about Down Under, especially with the recent visits by David Dingle and Peter Shanks of Carnival UK and the announcement from Royal Caribbean that it would double its presence there next year.
We also note the possible demise of easyCruise and have a look at how the German market is developing.

STORY OF THE WEEK
Boom Down Under
As the world cruises all pass by Sydney in February, cruise line executives have the habit of escaping the northern winter and visiting Sydney for various events and announcements. This year was no exception, and while Carnival brands P&O Cruises, P&O Australia, Princess, Cunard and even Seabourn remain to the fore, Royal Caribbean has just announced that it is about to double its presence down under.
To begin with, David Dingle, ceo of Carnival UK (which includes Australia in its portfolio), visited down under late last month and revealed that twelve ships from Carnival brands P&O Australia, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, Cunard Line and Yachts of Seabourn would visit Australia this year. Half of these ships would be based there.
He also revealed that Carnival Australia would book 190,000 passengers this year and then went on to predict that that figure would rise to 300,000 in 2010-11 and 350,000 in 2011-12, a massive increase of almost 85% over two years.
Part of this growth will come from P&O Australia, which has added Pacific Jewel and will soon see the addition of Pacific Pearl when she transfers in to the down under fleet. Both ships are moving to Australia from the Ocean Village brand, which is being closed down.
Mr. Dingle’s visit was followed last week by Peter Shanks, president and managing director of Cunard Line, who revealed that Australia and Germany are Cunard’s fastest-growing markets, and that Cunard will probably attract 10,000 cruisers from Australia this year, up 25% on last year. Not bad for a line whose ships only call on Australia once a year on world cruises. Mr. Shanks sailed from Sydney on Saturday in Queen Victoria, on board which he will host a dinner for the ship’s full round the world cruisers.
Princess Cruises operate two Australian-based ships now in the 1,950-berth Sun Princess and Dawn Princess, which latter will leave Sydney on a world cruise for the Australian market on May 21 for the Mediterranean (with a special call at Gallipoli, where 8,141 Australians gave their lives in the First World War), the UK and Ireland, the United States, Panama, Mexico, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands before arriving home again on September 3.
However, more interesting news came from Gavin Smith, managing director of Royal Caribbean Cruises Australia, who last Thursday announced that in November 2011, Royal Caribbean will send its 2,112-berth Brilliance of the Seas to join the 2,000-berth Rhapsody of the Seas in Australia. He further commented that Royal Caribbean is considering basing a ship year-round in Australia starting in 2012.
This still leaves them a long way behind Carnival Australia but there has to be room in that market for more than just one cruising group, especially as Smith admitted that most of Royal Caribbean’s business in Australia presently comes from abroad. Radiance of the Seas will become the newest and largest ship to be based at Sydney.
Royal Caribbean Cruises has been chasing P&O in the UK market for several years now and has its 3,600-berth Independence of the Seas based in Southampton, to be joined this year by Celebrity Cruises’ 2,850-berth Celebrity Eclipse. In the UK, the two lines have developed a very strong local following and with the addition of some Vegemite and Fosters beer, there should be no reason they couldn’t do the same in Australia. Unfortunately, however, the last time it tried to sell Celebrity in the Australian market, it ended up cancelling the programme (and still  there is still no word on whether Celebrity might try again once all its new ships are delivered).
The false start by Celebrity might remind one of NCL, who also tried the Australian market with Norwegian Capricorn Line in 1997. But when Star Cruises took over NCL in 2001, the line was dissolved.
In terms of penetration of the cruise product down under, probably the easiest comparison is with fellow Commonwealth countries:

It should be noted that while New Zealand looks strong, its cruise market is made up mostly of foreigners. But however one might measure the Australian market, if it were developed to the same level as the UK and Canada it would be producing well in excess of 500,000 cruisers a year instead of the present 330,000. That would indicate that Mr Dingle is probably quite right when he predicts such huge growth for Carnival Australia, even when one realizes that he is predicting that his company alone will handle as many cruisers as the entire Australian market now produces for all lines.
Meanwhile, in Perth, Classic International Cruises has been operating Fremantle-based cruises since 2003. It now uses the 560-berth Athena, and in 2010-11 will add the 450-berth Princess Danae, working out of Singapore, for the Australian fly/cruise market. Meanwhile, Carnival Australia will also be sending its 1,485-berth Pacific Sun and Sun Princess out to Fremantle to compete with them in the Western Australian market.
And while Australia hasn’t seen any Italian ships since the days of Sitmar Cruises’ Fairstar and Fair Princess, the 2,260-berth Costa Deliziosa will be calling there on her 2011 maiden world cruise, adding a bit of a European taste to the product on offer there.
Bottom line to all this is when Australia might see its first cruise newbuilding. As David Dingle once pointed out, Ocean Village was the sort of brand that could only support second-hand ships. But will these same ships in the Australian market be able to produce strong enough support to make it feasible to build a new ship dedicated specifically to Australian cruising?

THIS WEEK IN CRUISING
The End of EasyCruise?
Is last week’s news the end of the line for easyCruise or are they just taking a year out? In August last year, after four years of rather inconsistent operations, Stelios Haji-Iouannou finally sold the rights to the use of the easyCruise name to Greek ferry operator Hellenic Seaways.
From starting off as a boiled down "no frills" cabin price only product on the Riviera it had evolved into a pretty standard budget Greek Island cruise operator, running 3- and 4-day cruises from Piraeus, by the time this sale took place. In return, Mr. Stelios obtained some interest in Hellenic Seaways.
The news broke last week, however, only six months after the Hellenic Seaways agreement, that easyCruise was putting its 2010 itineraries "on hold" and could not confirm any availability until it heard further from its new owners.
EasyCruise has has difficulties from its start in 2005. The 232-berth easyCruise 1 proved to be too small to be viable and had to be replaced by the 462-berth easyLife in 2008. The startup line’s first venture into river cruising, the easyCruise 2 of 2006, had also closed down midway through its 2007 season.
In a related move, the original sister ship of EasyCruise 1 (both were former Renaissance ships), the 100-berth Clelia II, and named for Mr. Stelios’ sister Clelia, has been chartered for ten years to Ausralia’s Orion Cruises and is to join them in the summer of 2011 as Orion II. As Clelia II, she opened a Great Lakes cruise service for Travel Dynamics of New York in 2009 and will still return for one more Great Lakes season this year.
News is not all bad for the Great Lakes, however, as Pearl Seas Cruises’ 210-berth Pearl Mist will be cruising the Great Lakes this year and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ 420-berth Columbus will be returning in 2011.
But in the end, getting back to easyCruise, it seems "no frills" cruise lines are not such a great idea after all. Most people really do want the frills (and the thrills). Not only easyCruise, but Airtours’ Sun Cruises and the imminent demise of Ocean Village tend to point in this direction. There are two or three exceptions of course. Thomson maintains Island Cruises as a separate one-ship brand.
And Louis Cruises and Classic International Cruises still manage to carve out a niche for themselves among those who want a low-fare product. But the latter were never introduced as no frills products.
The German Market
Peter Shanks’ comment that Germany was one of Cunard’s two fastest-growing markets does not come as a complete surprise. Going all the way back to Norwegian American Cruises, which Cunard acquired in 1988, it has had a large German following. At first they stayed with Vistafjord, which had typically been about half full of Germans as she was based in Europe, where  Sagafjord was its American ship. Even after Vistafjord became Cunard’s Caronia she retained her strong German following and whenever RMS Queen Mary 2 calls on Hamburg she brings throngs out to see her.
To-day that German following has successfully been transferred to the new Queens and there was a very large number of German passengers on Queen Victoria‘s Transatlantic crossing to New York last month..
In the meantime, the "club cruise" ships of Aida Cruises have built up such a large following that there are now seven of them, ranging 1,185 to 2,050 berths, with two more on order. Aida is such a new name in the business that most people forget that it actually dates back to the 1960s as Deutsche Seerederi (DSR). Its first ship, Volkerfreundschaft, is still sailing as Classic International’s much-rebuilt Athena.
All but the original Aida, built in 1996 and now named AidaCara, were built in Germany, four by Meyer Werft and two by Aker MTW. To-day Aida is operated as the German division of Costa Cruises and its ships are all all registered in Genoa. Nevertheless, it is dedicated to the German-speaking market, so much so that one can even forget sometimes that Aida and Cunard share the same ownership.
The latest product on the German market, TUI Cruises’ 1,870-berth Mein Schiff, is a joint venture between Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and TUI Travel, who also operate the upmarket Hapag-Lloyd Cruises. In the three months to December 2009, TUI Cruises, which began operations in May 2009, generated 122,000 passenger days, for a load factor of 69%.
The upmarket Hapag-Lloyd Cruises produced 77,000 passenger days on its four ships, a 77% load factor. Lower bookings reported in both markets reflected the economic conditions of the period in question. TUI Cruises will celebrate its first anniversary this year with a 12-night Round Britain cruise from Hamburg on May 9-21, with fares from €1,695 per person.
Meanwhile, Phoenix Reisen of Bonn have continued to expand until they now have four ocean ships, the 600-berth Amadea and 885-berth Albatros and the chartered Athena and 450-berth Alexander von Humboldt. They are due to take delivery in 2011 of the 1,200-berth Artania, built as the first Royal Princess and trading today as P&O’s Artemis. Then there is Hansa Kreutzfahrten of Bremen, with its 400-berth Delphin, 650-berth Delphin Voyager and the chartered 450-berth Princess Danae.
Other operators in the German market include three single-ship lines, Peter Deilmann Cruises of Neustadt, with its 550-berth Deutschland, Lord Nelson Seereisen, with its 780-berth Mona Lisa, now in British Columbia for the Winter Olympics, and Transocean Cruises of Bremen with its 590-berth Astor, not to mention numerous river operators.

Cunard’s Queen Victoria is “Pretty in Pink” in Sydney

 

History was made in Sydney today when, in a world first, Cunard’s Queen Victoria was illuminated in pink while berthed at Sydney’s Circular Quay. Queen Victoria was bathed in vibrant pink light from dusk to support Australia’s National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF), which officially launched its 2010 fundraising target of $17 million at an event onboard. Pink lights illuminated the entire ship, providing the ideal setting for the event.

“Pink has become synonymous with the fight against breast cancer, so we are delighted to offer NBCF the opportunity to boost awareness of research and claim a world first by being the first to illuminate a liner in pink,” said Peter Shanks, president of Cunard Line.

Queen Victoria will make history again this time next year when she sails her first “Americas” season, traversing the Panama Canal on more than one voyage, making rare roundtrip sailings from Los Angeles to Hawaii, plus debuting her inaugural Mexico Getaway voyage.

For more information about Queen Victoria or to book a voyage, consult The Cruise People, Ltd,

New Orleans Year-Round – Bon Voyage Parties – Ocean Liner Society – Barcelona: The Miami of Europe

by Mark Tre’ – "The Cruise Examiner"
This week we note changes to the NCL line-up, including the assignment of Norwegian Spirit to New Orleans year-round. Princess re-introduces on board bon voyage parties, which have been gone from the scene for decades.
The Ocean Liner Society chooses Bleu de France for its 2010 cruise.
And this week’s special topic is Barcelona – is it becoming the Miami of Europe?

THIS WEEK IN CRUISING
Norwegian Spirit Goes Year-Round at New Orleans
Starting in November when she finishes her 2010 Boston-Bermuda season, Norwegian Spirit will be transferred to operating 7-day cruises out of New Orleans, every Sunday year-round. The 2,018-berth ship had once sailed year-round from New York and was well-known for the 1-night party cruises she offered between her 6-day cruises. The Spirit first started cruising from New Orleans in the winter season and has developed a following in that city.
The Spirit’s new itinerary will see her making calls at Costa Maya and Cozumel in Mexico, Roatan in Honduras and at Belize City.
Basing the Spirit in New Orleans will double NCL’s local capacity to 100,000 passengers a year and is a sign that the city is finally recovering from the trials of Katrina almost five years ago.
She will join Carnival Cruise Line’s 2,758-berth Carnival Triumph, which moved to New Orleans year-round in November 2009 and now sails 4-, 5- and 7-night itineraries out of the Big Easy.
Norwegian Spirit‘s place on this year’s Boston-Bermuda circuit will be taken in 2011 by the 2,224-berth Norwegian Dawn from the New York-Boston run, which in turn will be replaced by the 2,400-berth Norwegian Jade, coming over from Europe and upgrading NCL’s overall Bermuda fleet capacity by about 9 per cent.
In a general reassignment of ships with the delivery of Norwegian Epic, Norwegian Gem will replace Norwegian Jade in Venice and  Norwegian Sun will switch her base port from Dover to Copenhagen in 2011. With Southampton having lost Norwegian Jade to Venice in 2009, this will be the first time in many years that NCL will have no ship based in the UK. Competitior MSC, although moving from Dover to Southampton, is likely to do well out of this

Bon Voyage Parties Are Back on Princess
From the people who brought you the $150 bridge and engine room tour with the galley and behind the stage thrown in, we now have the $39 per person farewell party. Beginning in March, departing passengers will be able to invite friends on board as they prepare to sail on their next Princess cruise. Limited to 50 visitors per sailing, the programme will only be available at certain ports.
Announced on Thursday by Princess Cruises, the programme, includes lunch in the main dining room and a tour of the ship, and will only be available in Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, starting in March, and then it will then be rolled out to New York, San Francisco and Seattle in time for the Alaska season. Security concerns will be handled by inputting visitor information to the same system that is used for passengers.
This move revives an old American tradition of having passengers on board on sailing, particularly in the ocean liner days in New York, but also in the early "Love Boat" days in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, another Los Angeles-based line, Crystal Cruises, has been allowing visitors on board for some time at no charge unless a meal is taken but it does not advertise its programme

.
The Ocean Liner Society Chooses Bleu de France for 2010
The Ocean Liner Society has chosen Croisières de France and its Bleu de France for its 2010 group cruise. Leaving Marseilles on Sunday 20th June, the cruise will call at Olbia, Palermo, Malta and Tunisia and will make an overnight call at Ibiza before returning to Marseilles on 27th June. Built as Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ last Europa in 1981, Bleu de France later served as SuperStar Europa and SuperStar Aries for Star Cruises and Holiday Dream for Spain’s Pullmantur before becoming entering the French market for the newly-established Croisières de France in 2008.
This ship has been chosen because she was one of the original cruise ship classics of the 1980s, when ship sizes were increasing. Not only that but as designed she was built for Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, and like the present Europa was in her time the top-rated cruise ship in the world.
Her design is interesting as most public rooms are located aft while all her staterooms are forward in the quieter part of the ship, a trend that was once popular in German cruise ships but has not been continued as ships became larger.
The Ocean Liner Society has booked group cruises on two Pullmantur ships in the past, Oceanic and Sky Wonder and last year she cruised the Greek islands back-to-back in two pioneer cruise ships, Louis Cruises’ Aquamarine (built as Royal Caribbean’s Nordic Prince) and Aegean Pearl (built as NCL’s Southward). Society members also managed to cruise in Phoenix Reisen’s Maxim Gorkiy, the last of the German North Atlantic liners when she was built as the Hamburg, in 2008 before she was finally sold for scrapping in India.
Members of the general public can qualify to travel on these cruises simply by joining the Ocean Liner Society. Membership is £20 in the UK, £23 in Europe and £25 in the rest of the world. As well as the opportunity of joining OLS group cruises, this includes a subscription to their 48-page quarterly journal, Sea Lines. Further details can be found at http://www.ocean-liner-society.com.
The Ocean Liner Society is a focus for those primarily interested in ships that undertook line voyages, how they changed into cruising ships and the cruise liners that will take people to sea in the 21st century. It is a non-profit organisation whose members celebrate the passenger ship in its many forms. Members include employees of major shipping companies, authors, ship enthusiasts, inveterate travellers and armchair sailors.
The society publishes a 48-page full colour quarterly magazine called "Sea Lines" and runs an annual "International Ship Show" as well as sponsoring monthly lectures on maritime subjects in London.

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC
Barcelona: The Miami of Europe?
Royal Caribbean International followed NCL’s decision to deploy its new 153,000-ton giant, Norwegian Epic, to Barcelona in May 2011 by announcing last week that it will send its own 154,407-ton Liberty of the Seas to Barcelona in 2011. As Carnival Cruise Line’s newly-delivered 130,000-ton Carnival Magic will also be there, this sets up the world’s largest battle of cruise giants from the same port.
Just to compare these ships here are the relevant details:

But what really set tongues wagging last week was when Belén Wangüemert, managing director of Royal Caribbean Cruises in Spain, said that the Spanish market would achieve a cruise passenger growth of 60 per cent in 2010, double the 30 per cent achieved in 2009.
In addition to the top three international lines, three native Spanish cruise lines operare in what, despite the state of the Spanish economy, has become the fastest-growing cruise market in Europe. Local Spanish brands include Iberocruceros, with four ships, and Pullmantur, with six, now controlled respectively by Carnival Corp & PLC and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines.
A third Spanish cruise competitor, Happy Cruises, until recently called Quail Cruises, works out of Valencia and calls on Barcelona with two smaller ships, while calls are also now spreading to Spanish ports on the Atlantic coast.
This weekend, Norwegian Epic has been out in the Bay of Biscay on her first set of sea trials, during which she was observed making speeds in excess of 24 knots. She now returns to dry dock for further work before undergoing a second set of sea trials in April. While this was happening, NCL’s UK office announced that it would probably account for between 25 and 30 per cent of passengers that would board her in Barcelona in 2011, something that might not come as too much of a surprise seeing that NCL will have no ships based in the UK by then (see above).
In recent years, Miami has seen about 4 million passengers a year cross its cruise docks while Barcelona, the largest embarkation port in Europe, has now exceeded 2 million, a number that is growing quickly. At the beginning and end of each respective season there are also a number of Transatlantic voyages available between the two ports, leaving Miami for Barcelona in the spring and returning from Barcelona to Miami in the autumn.
But more and more, ships are not crossing but cruising from Barcelona year-round, another reason for the growth the port has seen in the passenger numbers moving over its seven cruise terminals. Barcelona now ranks fourth in the world after Miami, Port Everglades and Port Canaveral.
Like Miami, one of Barcelona’s main requirements is a top-grade airport to serve its port, but unlike Miami, complaints are not widespread. Spurred along by the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Barcelona’s airport has been developed so that in 2009 it handled 27 million passengers with an 83 per cent on time ratio, with a new terminal area and also now a new runway. Its airport was scored in the top ten in the world in 2009 by Flighstats.
Miami, by comparison, handles about 34 million passengers. Another big difference is that while Miami airport is 14 kilometres from its port, the distance in Barcelona is just 3 kilometres. And the port has the advantage of being near to a major tourist attraction, the attractive Los Ramblas, which is within reasonable walking distance of its cruise terminals, assuming that one is not carrying baggage.
With this latest news, Barcelona will definitely be the place to watch. In addition to the big three, cruise lines sailing from Barcelona also include Aida, Celebrity, Costa, Crystal, Disney, Holland America, Iberocruceros, MSC, Oceania, Princess, Pullmantur, Seabourn and Silversea.

A "Four Queens" Cruise – Costa’s World Cruise – How Not to Charter a Ship – Ten Years of Europa

This week we find an interesting cruise that will include four Cunard Queens. An Alberta cruise ship charterer will be out approximately $15 million after cancelling a Winter Olympics charter on the Norwegian Star. Costa rejoins the ranks of those operating world cruises with its new Costa Deliziosa, delivered to-day in Venice.

This week’s special topic is ten years of excellence for Hapag-Lloyd’s Europa, top-rated ship in the world.

THIS WEEK IN CRUISING
Four Queens in One Cruise
Reader Offers Ltd, a travel agent retailer that sells exclusively through national newspapers in the UK, has put together an interesting cruise for 2011 that incorporates (but does not include) all four Queens – the new Queen Elizabeth, RMS Queen Mary 2, the original RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach and Queen Victoria. Customers will fly to New York, spend two nights in the Waldorf-Astoria, sail in the new Queen Elizabeth from New York to Los Angeles, spend a night in the original Queen Mary in Long Beach and then sail in Queen Victoria from Los Angeles to the Hawaiian Islands and Ensenada, Mexico, before returning home.
There is a little cheating in this plan, however, as RMS Queen Mary 2 is only involved as part of the first meeting of Cunard’s present three Queens, planned for New York, so, while Reader Offers say guests will "witness"  Queen Mary 2 in New York, it is unlikely they will actually get to go on board. An interesting attraction however is that Reader Offers has been able to set up a cocktail party on board the original Queen Mary in Long Beach with Commodore Ron Warwick, retired former commander of the Queens, before setting off in Queen Victoria for Hawaii and Mexico.
Queen Victoria will be based on the US West Coast in the winter of 2011, marking the first time that Cunard has based a ship there for several years. During the Second World War, Aquitania did some emergency trooping between the US West Coast and Hawaii after Pearl Harbor, and a number of Cunard ships have operated from West Coast ports to Alaska and other destinations in the past.

Costa Deliziosa‘s World Cruise
In an interesting twist this week, Costa Crociere has announced that it is going back into the world cruise business, an area from which it has been absent for many years. The 2,860-berth Costa Deliziosa has been scheduled for a 99-day circumnavigation to leave Savona on December 28, 2011. This will also be a first for Savona, which has become Costa’s main Italian cruise port. Although Costa is headquartered in Genoa, it owns the cruise terminal in nearby Savona.
The world cruise will be divided into three sectors: from Savona to Los Angeles via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal; from Los Angeles to Singapore via Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia; and from Singapore to Savona via Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, the Red Sea and Egypt.
Costa Deliziosa was delivered to Costa Cruises just this morning at the Venice Passenger Terminal and will sail to Dubai, for her official naming on February 23, the first cruise ship to be christened in an Arabian city. This winter, Costa Deliziosa and her 2009-delivered sister ship Costa Luminosa will both be based on Dubai, where Costa has been making huge inroads in recent years, with 140,000 passenger movements this winter (remember that embarking is one movement and disembarking is another).
The Deliziosa and the Luminosa are Costa’s "top of the range" ships, setting them apart from the rest of the fleet, and the fact that the latest ship has been chosen to revive Costa’s world cruise programme would seem to confirm this. The new ships’ modern design and use of premium materials such as marble and granite, stucco applied by spatula using the technique known as "spatolato veneziano" and other decorative flourishes including "parchment scroll" lamé, Murano glass, refined Zebrano wood and Wenge timber, stylish polished and glazed steel, and 970 La Murrina chandeliers, confirm this as well. Costa has not made a world cruise since pre-Carnival days, when it used Danae or Daphne as its world cruisers in the late 1980s.

How Not to Charter a Cruise Ship
In a move that will very probably cost Newwest Special Projects, a division of Newwest Travel of Edmonton, Alberta, about $15 million, while costing Norwegian Cruise Line nothing, Newwest has cancelled a Winter Olympics charter on  Norwegian Star that was to have run from February 6 to March 6, including positioning cruises from Los Angeles to Vancouver before and Vancouver to Los Angeles after her planned use as an 1,100-room hotel ship in North Vancouver for the duration of the Winter Olympics.
Last Monday, just five days before the ship was due to leave Los Angeles for Vancouver, Newwest announced that it was cancelling the charter and would do all it could to rebook customers who were left without Olympic accommodations. Reportedly, room prices had dropped from $1,400 per night to $700 per night to as little as $275 a night in an attempt to book the ship, part of the cost cutting achieved by stripping out some of the cruise product such as meals and entertainment, but to no avail. As well, the ship was originally to have been berthed at a quasi-metropolitan dock at the foot of Lonsdale Street in North Vancouver but later reports put her be at the Kinder Morgan Sulphur Dock. In either case International Ship and Port Facilities Security (ISPS) would have meant an extra cost, how much depending on the facility.
It is now understood that NCL will take advantage of the cancellation of the charter to send Norwegian Star for a routine drydocking in Victoria BC from February 14 to 28, a period that has kindly been paid for by Newwest, and will give NCL the ability to sell a few more cruises later when it had been intended to drydock her.
Under the terms of a similar cruise ship charter party used by a Carnival group company, Newwest would have had to place a deposit of about 10 per cent on confirming the charter and make two stage payments of 20% each with final balance of 50% payable one month before delivery. It would also have been required to pay for all port charges and fuel, plus a service charge of about $10 dollars per passenger per day. The fact that the ship’s crew were all required to obtain Canadian visas for the intended period in Vancouver was also said to have presented an extra cost of about $200,000. Some of these latter costs may be saved but the multi-million dollar charter fee will be forfeit.
In a statement made by Newwest before the cancellation of the charter, "Our sales have not been what we had hoped for and our expenses have increased beyond what we ever expected." We suppose that $1,400 per room per night was too much to expect, even for the Olympics. As The Cruise Examiner said on January 11, "such hotel ship charters seem to be a complicated and risky business, for everyone that is except the cruise lines, for whom it seems most lucrative."

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC
Ten Years of Excellence with the Europa
For the tenth year in a row, Douglas Ward, in the 2010 edition of the "Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising and Cruise Ships" has given Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ 28,890-ton 408-guest Europa top marks and awarded her the only five-stars-plus rating in the guide. And for several years now, Hapag-Lloyd has been greeting English-speaking passengers on its ships with a number of special "bilingual" cruises that are sold in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand (all the crew must speak English anyway, but menus, daily programmes, newspapers and other literature are available in English on these bilingual cruises).
But one problem the Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd is trying to confront is how to address the initial uncertainty or doubt that intending passengers may have about a product they are not familiar with. How much easier it must be to book with someone like a Regent or a Seabourn which your friends have travelled on or that is written up frequently in the English-language consumer media, with numerous press items and reviews available on line. So one might well may ask "Why should I cruise with Hapag-Lloyd?"
This article will try to address some of those points and the very first that comes to mind is quality, including some of the most exquisite service available at sea. The Europa has achieved its score of 1,851 points out of a possible 2,000 (92.6%) for a reason so let’s see why. The first thing to note is that Mr. Ward awards 472 points out of a possible 500 (95.2%) to the ship herself, her highest score in any category. Next, pretty well level pegging at 372 and 371 our of 400 (93%) come the cruise and the food. On the ship herself, Mr. Ward calls her "one of the world’s most spacious purpose-built cruise ships, an exquisite retreat," pointing out things such as the fact that all towels, and even doilies, are of cloth and paper is used nowhere, real flowers abound throughout and drinks by the pool are served in real glasses, not plastic.
He goes on to point out that in suite movies on Europa are free (while "all-inclusive" Silversea charges), the ship carries more than 5,000 different food ingredients so that menus are not repeated, afternoon tea includes a choice of 30 loose teas, not tea bags, and each passenger is assigned a free email address with their tickets (charges apply to images and attachments). Mr. Ward’s ultimate conclusion is that what wins Europa her top spot is "detail, detail, detail," or as he puts it "the little details that most other cruise lines have long left behind in the age of discounts."
While Europa does charge for wines and spirits, this is done at real duty-free prices and not as on other lines at hotel prices (where the line makes a whopping profit). Mr. Ward points out that "they are not included for the simple reason that ships that include drinks typically have a much more limited selection, including young table wines that may not be to all tastes." And the beer, soft drinks, water and juices that are stocked in your fridge, and the full bar in the higher level suites, are free. Meanwhile, shore excursions, another area now regarded by most cruise lines as a separate profit centre, with typically a 100% markup, are value for money on Hapag-Lloyd Cruises.
Europa on board is a delight, lounges with tall ceilings, an elegant seven-deck high atrium, she is more grand hotel than resort, and both the main restaurant (the Europa restaurant) and show lounge (the Europa Lounge) seat the full compliment of passengers. In addition to the main restaurant there is alternate dining at no extra charge in the Oriental, with hand-made Meissen porcelain carrying a flying fish pattern from a 1904 Hapag ship, and the Venezia, with fine Rosenthal china and excellent Italian fare. At the stern, the Lido Café gives onto the open deck. And above the Lido there is the wonderful Sansibar, a bar that also opens onto the stern
In addition to the Europa, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises operates the top-rated expedition ships Hanseatic and Bremen, cruising in polar and wilderness regions, and the 420-berth Columbus, which will be sailing back into the Great Lakes again in 2011.

 

Courtesy Mark Tre’ – "The Cruise Examiner"

Two Twentieth Anniversaries – Holland America Supports Tilbury – Carnival in Europe – MSC to Southampton – Cruise Ships and Haiti

This week we cover the twentieth anniversary celebrations at Celebrity and Crystal, Holland America in Tilbury, plans for the Carnival Magic and MSC’s move from Dover to Southampton. This week our special topic is cruise ships and Haiti after the earthquake

THIS WEEK IN CRUISING
Two Twentieth Anniversaries
It is perhaps not a coincidence that both Celebrity Cruises and Crystal Cruises got their starts in 1990, at a time when people began to search for more upmarket cruise options.
Celebrity Cruises grew out of the longstanding operations of Chandris Cruises when it was awarded a new New York-Bermuda contract, part of the requirement being that Chandris bring its own image upmarket from its previous New York-based Fantasy Cruises to something more in line with Bermuda’s rather more exclusive reputation. Hence Celebrity Cruises. To open the new line, Chandris ordered two new ships, Horizon of 1990 and her sister, Zenith, of 1992, and converted a third into the more upmarket Meridian, also in 1990.
In 1997, however, partly in order to raise more capital for newbuildings, the Chandris family sold Celebrity to Royal Caribbean and a series of new ships followed, including three 1,800-berth "Century" class, four 2,400-berth "Millenium" class and now five 2,850-berth "Solstice" class ships, not to mention Azamara Club Cruises, with two ships, and Celebrity Xpeditions, with one ship in the Galapagos. In celebration of its 20th Anniversary, Celebrity has just announced that it will spend $200 million on adding "Solstice" class amenities to its "Millenium" class ships.
Among other things, a Tuscan Grill steak house will be added and new furniture, bedding, carpets and flat screen televisions installed in the existing cabins to give Celebrity a more uniform product. There will be no new lawns though.
Crystal Cruises itself was not entirely new either, stemming from the previous passenger operations of Japan’s NYK Line. Its first ship, the 940-berth Crystal Harmony, was built in Japan in 1990, a second, the 960-berth Crystal Symphony, in 1995, and a third, the 1,100-berth Crystal Serenity in 2003. Meanwhile Crystal Harmony went on to become parent company NYK’s Asuka II.
Crystal is publishing a 180-page 20th Anniversary Atlas and offering a 20th Anniversary gift selection as well as a 20th Anniversary Pinot Noir from the "C" vineyard in California and a 20th Anniversary Billecart-Salmon Champagne. But the line is best known at the moment for introducing last year’s "Freedom" campaign, whereby each couple is given a $2,000 on board credit that they can spend on what they want, be it drinks, wine, spa treatments or shore excursions, allowing it thereby to compete with all-inclusive lines such as Regent, Seabourn or Silversea.

Holland America Reviving Tilbury, and Three UK ships in 2011
After a trial UK-UK cruise on the 2,100-berth Eurodam last year and successfully selling three UK to UK Eurodam cruises from Dover this year, Holland America has announced that it will run three ships from the UK in 2011. Eurodam will be joined by the 1,400-berth Ryndam, with both ships offering cruises from Dover next year.
But the really interesting news is that the line is offering a number of cruises from Tilbury this summer with the 835-berth Prinsendam, which in 2011 will give Holland America three UK-based ships for the first time, and seven in Europe.
Prinsendam‘s cruises mean a long-awaited revival for Tilbury’s underused London Cruise Terminal. Although Tilbury has been supported by Cruise & Maritime Services for many years, the port had become more or less a one-pony show and the arrival of Prinsdendam will give it a much higher profile than the usual budget ships such as Arion, Arielle, Astor and Marco Polo.
Prinsendam has scheduled four Tilbury cruises for this summer between June and September. Two will be 14-day voyages, to the Baltic and Celtic nations, respectively, one will be a 15-day European sampler and the longest will be 22 days to the Top of the World. In 2011, Prinsendam will also run four Tilburty cruises in 2011, two of which will be 14-night round-Britain cruises from and to Tilbury on July 11 and August 29.

Carnival Returns to Europe in 2011 with the Magic
Carnival Cruise Lines has been an on and off carrier in Europe, usually relying on its American passenger base rather than trying to develop a European market – and why not as it owns Costa and P&O anyway? But on delivery in 2011, the new 3,690-berth Carnival Magic will spend the summer on a series of 7-, 9- and 11-night cruises from Barcelona. While some sources have announced that Carnival would be "bringing" the Carnival Magic to Europe, this is not entirely true as she is actually being built in Europe, at Fincantieri’s Monfalcone yard east of Venice, and her maiden voyage will be a 9-night delivery cruise from Venice to Barcelona.
Carnival did have a ship in Dover in 2008 but cancelled its 2009 programme to retreat to the States during the recession. But it appears there is a certain amount of demand from Carnival customers to add Medterranean cruises to its product line.

MSC Leaves Dover for Southampton
In other news MSC Cruises has announced that it will be basing its 2,000-berth MSC Opera in Southampton for the summer of 2011. MSC’s UK managing director Giulio Libutti said: "Ex-UK cruising is becoming ever more desirable and popular and we are delighted to be working with Southampton port in 2011. Southampton port is well suited to our new planned itineraries cruising to the north of France, Spain and Portugal."
He added that Southampton has "great transport links offered by road, rail and air, which will better service our passengers. The move also allows us to better penetrate Southampton’s local markets, as well as the whole of the South West, which is saturated with established cruisers and an increasing number of first time cruisers."
While MSC is leaving Dover he didn’t mention that the new high-speed train service between London’s St Pancras Station and Dover now takes only 59 minutes using Eurostar track, compared to the 75 to 90 minutes it takes to reach Southampton from London Waterloo.  MSC Magnifica will also be showcased to the UK travel trade in Southampton this month. Although Southampton lost an NCL ship last year, it can now claim all of Cunard, P&O, Princess, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and MSC Cruises, just to name a few, as regular customers.

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC
Cruise Ships and Haiti
One of the things the Haiti earthquake did was to lead to a certain amount of embarassment at Royal Caribbean Cruises, which has been operating a private cruise port at a place it once called Labadee, Hispaniola, for some years. Identifying the port with the island of Hispaniola, on which are located both Haiti and the Dominican Republic indicated that the line had been traditionally reluctant to admit that this place is actually in Haiti.
Put it down to Haiti’s poor reputation for governance, poverty or voodoo if you like, but that is the case. Haitian-born musician Wylcef Jean pointed out just this weekend in "The Times" of London that "every year luxury cruises stop at a thriving Haitian port called Labadee. It is only years later that a lot of those tourists find out, actually, they were in Haiti."
Bert Archer, in a column in Toronto’s "Globe & Mail" last week, wrote "When news broke this week that a cruise ship sailed into Haiti for a beach-resort stop three days after last week’s cataclysm, hundreds of people expressed themselves on bulletin boards and in social media. They either were livid about the callousness of holidaymakers cavorting in sunny waters while people were dying mere kilometres away, or stubbornly held it was an irrelevant or even positive thing.
No one was debating whether people should have been cruising that week at all – or whether cruise ships should ever berth in Haiti, which has for decades been the poorest nation in the hemisphere, in perpetual need of the help that is finally flowing now.
No, the argument was over whether it was too soon or too close. Should cruise passengers, instead of drinking margaritas on their private beach at Labadee, 100 kilometres from Port au Prince, have hopped the fence that separates Royal Caribbean’s leased land from the rest of the country and helped dig people out? Or should they have stayed on board to protest, as half of them did when the first ship, the Independence of the Seas, stopped there on Jan 15."
In earlier years, both Port au Prince and Cap Haitien had featured as regular ports of call for cruise ships, and shore excursions had been offered to Henri Christophe’s Castle of Sans Souci, modelled after Versailles, or his massive Citadel, with its twenty-foot wide ramparts draped over the higher reaches of Bonnet Mountain. To reach the Citadel was an arduous climb, requiring mules and guides.
Compare that to the hedonist beach activity at Labadee, completely isolated from the country that hosts it. All Haiti sees of that is $10 as a head tax from each passenger that Royal Caribbean and its sister company Celebrity bring there.
Admittedly, Royal Caribbean has done a creditable job at Labadee. It has donated the services of John Weis, its associate vice president at Labadee to the relief effort for several months; it has donated $2 million, along with the current net revenue earned at Labadee, to relief; it has donated sun loungers, excess bedding and furniture for use as a temporary hospital in a gym in Cap Haitien; it is bringing in fresh water and emergency food supplies on each of its ships; and it continues to employ some 230 Haitians at Labadee, as well as allowing a number of vendors onto its guarded site when ships come in.
But how many tourists know that the anchor of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria was once kept in a government building in Port ai Prince? Who knows where it is now. How many realize that the $10 head tax is paid by 500,000 passengers a year, producing $5 million on an annual basis.
How many realize that Labadee is only six miles from the once important cruise port of Cap Haitien. Passengers do not see the real Haiti and Haiti is offered little chance to progress by the cruise industry if it does not use its main ports.
But with Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas providing a weekly call at Labadee starting in 2011, that is a potential additional $3 million in head tax revenue from Labadee that could be used to improve the country’s highways and infrastructure. Perhaps it is time that Royal Caribbean and some others gave Haiti’s other ports a second thought rather than just treating the island as a location for an anonymous beach.
(Source: By Mark Tré – Cybercruises.com)