Recommend November 2011 - (Page 17)

Opposite page: Accommodations aboard AMAWaterway’s Zambezi Queen. cruise of our second ship, the AmaLotus, and La Marguerite, its sister ship, was started in 2009. The AmaLotus has 62 cabins and 124 passengers—it’s a beautiful, beautiful ship and it’s a wonderful program. The Mekong is booming. We started in 2009 and since then everybody else is coming in—Viking, Avalon—they’re both coming in, most of them with partnerships.” The partnerships Schreiner refers to is with Pandaw Cruises—Viking leases one of its ships and Avalon had its ship built by Pandaw in the classic colonial style Pandaw utilizes. “I was on the Mekong in 2007 looking at a partnership, but we decided to build our own ship. I enjoyed the Pandaw cruise, it was a wonderful cruise. But our past passengers have an expectation of what we offer them in Europe and on our Mekong ships we can deliver that,” he explains. As a result, he adds, “Our ships are somewhat unique there, but I think that will change very soon. I think they’re already thinking about rebuilding something like ours.” The trick, Schreiner says, “…is how you can mix and match to get the best thing out of it. With our Vietnamese partners, we went on their ships and they came to Europe on our ships. From the service side, it’s easy because you know the Asian hotels are fantastic and the service levels in Asia are really very, very high and the food quality is very, very good—they have wonderful cuisine, it’s cuisine everybody appreciates. From the food service side and from the excursion service, you can easily emulate or copy the European side. From the construction side, you have more challenges. They’re good ship builders, and the ships are beautiful,” but the company still elected to stay with the more European side Schreiner feels AMA passengers are more comfortable with. “The program is fantastic. I’ve cruised the Mekong five times and I could go there every month—there’s so much excitement every time you go.” The AmaLotus features 226-sq.-ft. deluxe staterooms with all the amenities of a fine hotel. All suites and staterooms offer outside accommodations, with more than 82 percent featuring balconies. Junior suites provide an extra spacious 290 sq. ft. of space, and suites, at 452 sq. ft., the company says, provide the ultimate in onboard pampering. AMAWaterways was the first North American cruise company to go on the Mekong and in 2012, they’re starting another first—a 4-day river cruise on the Chobe River tied to three different programs with stays in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Botswana and Victoria Falls. The Stars of Africa program offers three nights in Cape Town, three nights in the Kruger National Park area and one night in Johannesburg, in addition to the cruise. African Sunsets offers three nights in Cape Town and two nights each in the Okavango and the Savute Safari area in Botswana plus the cruise. The Golden Trails of Africa, meanwhile, features one night in Nairobi, Kenya, two nights in Amboseli, Kenya, one night on Lake Manyara in Tanzania, two nights in Ngorongoro, Tanzania, and three nights on the Serengeti in Tanzania and one night in Johannesburg, “The Zambezi Queen, it’s a small ship, just 14 cabins—28 passengers on the Chobe River, close to the Zambezi River, about 50 miles from Victoria. We do four nights on the ship, plus two nights referral package,” Schreiner explains. “Then we have three separate pre-cruise extensions we feed to the ship. One is Cape Town, then Kruger National Park and then to the ship; another is Cape Town and two Orient-Express camps in Botswana and then the ship; and the last one is Kenya on the Masai and then the ship.” On the cruise itself, Schreiner says, “You do game drives along the river in Chobe National Park. All the animals, the elephants, they all run down to the river to drink and you’re right in front of them and you’re going from one herd to another. I’ve never seen anything like that before—really and truly fascinating. It’s fairly low in numbers because it’s only 14 cabins and it’s starting in 2012 with a number of departures and then we’ll increase those to a fairly large number of departures in 2013. That’s something I’m really excited about.” avalon waterways In just seven years, the Avalon Waterways fleet has grown to 11 ships in Europe, a new ship and program on the Mekong in 2012 and an expanded program in Egypt. “It’s part of the whole growth that Avalon has gone through since we brought out our first ship in 2004, which signals not only what we are doing but I think also the travel style and how rapidly that’s growing,” explains Patrick Clark, director of operations for Avalon Cruises. “We’re not the only ones adding ships, they’re continuing to come on line and they’re continuing to come on line because the demand is there and the prospects look pretty good.” And, he adds, he’s pretty confident the market will not only be there for some time to come, but will continue to grow, despite the economy. “The demographics of the customers attracted to the river cruise style still tend to be experienced travelers. They’re individuals coming to the latter part of their working careers, some are in retirement already and they’re in situations where their children are already out of the house, their homes may be owned and have secure incomes in the sense they don’t have a lot of other things to support other than themselves. So that’s leaving them time to travel. That’s the good news because even with the size of the baby boomer generation that’s around 75 or 80 million, depending on what statistics you’re looking at—just a tiny portion of that is all we need to keep river cruising going for decades. That’s what’s driving the new ships.” Speaking of new ships, “Two of our 11 ships in Europe are going to be delivered in 2012 and that’s the new standard with the Panorama where we’ve got this 200-sq.-ft. stateroom with a wall of glass that opens up 7 ft. wide and the customers are responding. The new Panorama sold out this year and those three new ships have the highest load factors for 2012,” Clark says. “A lot of the companies are adding balconies but we said, wait, if we put a balcony on there, we take space away from the stateroom. But if you create an indoor balcony by adding the glass wall with a 7-ft. opening and with sitting areas there, you’ve got the larger staterooms. At night, when you close the drapes you’ve got all that space usable for in-room dining or having drinks with november 2011 17 ÍÍ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recommend November 2011

Editor's Notes/Agent Speak
Hotel Desk: RockResorts
Tour Talk: International Expeditions
River Cruise Product Expands Even More for 2012
Hot (or Cool) Toronto is Staid No More
Timeless Boston
South Africa Always Steals the Limelight
BVI: Beauty on the Water
Private Islands Sizzle
Barcelona Will Leave You Beaming
Unspoiled Myanmar is Open for Business
The Lowdown on South America's Capital Highs
Riviera Nayarit in the Pink
The Three Faces of Baja Sur

Recommend November 2011