In a traditional Hawaiian style naming ceremony that was designed to suitably coincide with American Independence Day, NCL's Pride of Aloha was named in Honolulu. NCL America welcomed its first US-flag vessel with festivities that highlighted Hawaiian culture, patriotism and the many obstacles NCL overcame to revive big-ship, US-flag cruising. In what has proven to be a major test of NCL's determination to open a new destination the Pride of Aloha represents part of a $1.4bn investment in NCL ships for the Hawaii market. "We had a golden opportunity to develop a new cruising destination that would rival Alaska as the most important cruising product in our industry,' said Tan Sri K. T. Lim, chairman and ceo of the Star Cruises Group.

 

Editorial:

By 2006 NCL expects one-third of its passengers will be taking a Hawaiian cruise.  Worldwide hopes the cruising consumer has the same faith as NCL in backing this venture with their vacation dollars.  We are concerned that the East Coast of the USA which represents such large percentage of cruise consumers will want to fly such a distance, that's assuming seats on flights are easy to  locate at a reasonable cost - a problem we have had with Europe this summer.  Will cruise consumers become repeat customers in the way they do at more accessible departure ports?  Will there be another 9/11 tragedy with the same impact on travel as the last.  All these are questions no one has an answer to at this stage, and this is just part of the gamble NCL has taken on.  We wish them every success in this heroic venture.  Lets not forget that there is a tax break interest for US Companies who do a program on an American Flag ship.  (go to here for details).

 

With all the hype about the NCL's ships it is easy to overlook the fact that there are other American Flagged ships on the market which also have a beneficial tax break for corporate programs, over the new few issues we will feature them for your information.

 

Ship Report:

• Pride of Aloha:  The Pride of Aloha is now on the U.S. Registry.  Following its California dry docking NCL  introduced the ship with a two-night agent event in Los Angeles.  Jim Huff was aboard for this historic but short cruise.  Jim was  supposed to have written a report on his experience on-board of the Pride but due to an unfortunate accident he is somewhat incapacitated and his report will now be included with our next newsletter.  We also mentioned that Jim Castle was supposed to have sampled the ship as well, but his cruise was cancelled by NCL as they felt the ship was not completely ready and the crew who had been working overtime for an extended period where due some down time.   In a brief conversation I had with Jim Huff prior to his departing for a couple of weeks R&R he did mention the following points which have a bearing on NCL's decision to cancel the second sailing.  Jim thought they ship was far from ready and that the decision to finish it before showing it to more agents was a good decision.  he also noted that the crew were looking worn and that they would benefit not only from some down time, but also some additional training.  He also wondered how the American crew was going to adjust to the long hours crew members traditionally work on ships.  The issue of overtime and time off for hours worked will be another problem.  Aside from the above, clients should be aware that NCL has also instigated a new and mandatory fee of US$10 per person per day on the Hawaiian itineraries, however, (NCL explained that because of the American crew, who are paid higher wages, tips are not required, but the Resort Fee helps NCL pay for insurance, medical benefits, etc. It cannot be adjusted nor can it be taken off of a passenger's bill) passengers should not consider this as the gratuity which is still also pretty much a  mandatory charge.  At the time of going to press NCL is reconsidering how to best present what is basically an increase in the price of the cruise.  .. look for more on this subject in a later issue.

Ship News

• Sapphire Princess: Sapphire is the sister ship to the recent Diamond which departs Seattle for Alaska every Saturday with Sapphire leaving on Sundays. Princess has basically divided up its Alaska product by homeport, the  Seattle ships doing round-trip Inside passage cruises, mostly for first-time Alaska passengers, while the Vancouver departures offers one ways to the Gulf of Alaska, with more emphasis on pre- and post-tours.  One of the arguments  against the Seattle departures is that they spend so little time in Alaska compared to their Vancouver counterparts, but on the Sapphire sailings passengers get to  spend 42 hours in Alaska/British Columbia.

• Following one of the latest industry trends of incorporating aspects of land-based attractions into the cruise experience, Celebrity Cruises this past week said that in combination with Cirque de Soleil, they will transform the observation lounges on at least two of the line's Millennium-class ships into "The Bar at the Edge of the Earth."  Among the aspects: Surreal characters will emerge for two hours each evening to greet cruise guests. It's a great  marketing idea, with name-brand programs such as these, you're assured of a certain level of professionalism with a name that clients can easily recognize and get excited about.

• Oriana, the 1960's P.O. cruise ship Oriana, something of a legend in her own time, was holed and took on a serious amount of water causing her to list severely at her berth.  Xinhua News Agency reported that SS Oriana was damaged during a storm on 17 June and had been listing.  During the storm she sustained a 2.2 meter gash at her bow this being the reason for the flooding of her lower decks, salvage had begun and it was announced that the gash had been welded and that pumping had begun. There was an assurance from China that Oriana was in no further danger.  The Oriana which was sold to the Japanese by P.O. eventually ended up as a theme park attraction in Dalian, China.

• Holland America Line has announced it's plans for Europe for next summer, with four ships in four different European regions.  Northern Europe which has always been a popular destination will see the Westerdam doing 10 day Baltic roundtrips from Copenhagen, 12 day day Med cruises and Western Europe sailings for movement between the Med and northern Europe, and 18-day transatlantics.  HALW will also be increasing it's Dutch departures both from Rotterdam and Amsterdam with the Prinsendam doing a series of Amsterdam roundtrip itineraries.  HALW expects 80-90% of its Europe clients will be North Americans however, they expect the mix to run  40% European/60% American on the Amsterdam cruises.  Amsterdam is a great city for North Americans to fly into and the Holland homeporting symbolizes the uniqueness of HAL's 2005 Europe program.  The Maasdam will handle the two northern transatlantics next summer. There will be a 17-day Boston/Rotterdam, followed by an 18-day Rotterdam/Boston that can also be taken as a 35-day roundtrip.  The chief port attractions there are Iceland and Greenland, however there's a very narrow window of opportunity to see them so HALW's making space available in prime-time summer for these unique ports of call.

New Builds:

• Carnival Cruise Lines’ newest ship, the Carnival Valor currently under construction at the Fincantieri shipyard in Italy will debute in Miami this December.  True to Carnival's name/theme association she will feature an interior design that explores the subject of heroes and heroism.  Following a special two-day introductory voyage to Nassau she will commence year-round seven day cruises to the east and west Caribbean.

• Norwegian Cruise Line will take delivery of the US Flagged Pride of America next June from Lloyd Werft (for complete update on the status of the Pride of America - click here) and the 2006 delivery of the Pride of Hawaii bringing NCL up to a total of three US-flag vessels in Hawaiian waters in 2006. The Pride of America which partially sank dockside at a storm in January is now scheduled to be delivered on June 6, 2005 and the Meyer Werft new build, Pride of Hawaii, will be deliver on April 1, 2006.  NCL's passenger throughput in Hawaii was 140,000 in 2003. That number will climb to roughly half a million a year by the time NCL has four vessels permanently operating Hawaii cruises which includes the non-US-flag Norwegian Wind, whose itineraries visit Fanning Island in Kiribati. (for a complete description of the Pride of Hawaii - click here).

Port News:

• Marseille, July 3rd saw the  opening of ts new terminal for mega-ships, the as yet unnamed terminal was constructed in just under two months for the modest sum of 360, 000 euro's half of which was contributed by MSC in return for the exclusive use of the terminal for one day a week for seven years.  The opening of the terminal was planned to coincided with the inaugural call of MSC's "Opera" and was attended by the CEO of MSC France, Mr. Stephan Snidjers.  Marseille now has the capacity to berth three ships of up to 250 mts length with smaller vessels being berthed in the Avant Port, Joliette.  Also in port at the time was the "Costa Fortuna" and CroisiFrances "Sapphire".

• Cardiff, the never ending search for new destinations has bought the Welsh Capital of Cardiff into the spotlight.  Cardiff port is a new name on the cruise scene but with Roath Dock and the Cardiff Bay water front being just ten minutes away from the city center it is very conveniently placed for tourist to visit.   Peter Deilmann's ship the "Deutschland" is making a call on August 3rd and with several others planned to call, it should help bring the port to the cruise industries attention.  

• Athens Olympic Games: We are barely a month away from the start of the Olympic Games in Athens.  We are hearing that tickets to the events are still in reasonable supply (depending on the event) however, as we have all no doubt heard or experienced, flights to Europe are in very short supply.  If one can believe what one reads in the newspaper, Greece will spend a billion dollars on security for the games.. this seems like a staggering amount of money and one hopes that at this cost they do achieve their goal and there are no issues.  How a country makes money out of the games with costs such as these is beyond me, but presumably it is viable as there is always plenty of competition to host the games.

• London:  The m/v World, will be the first cruise ship to officially use London’s new floating cruise terminal when it is inaugurated on Monday July 12. The cruise terminal which was designed and is owned by the Port of London Authority is actually a pontoon some 1760 feet in length on which is located two fully equipped modular structures designed to handle cruise passenger traffic.

Other News: Check the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble's bookstore for Bob Dickinson' s, (President of Carnival Corperation) new "best seller".  Bob continues to keep his focus on the future as evidenced in the title of his new book,  The Complete 21st Century Travel and Hospitality Marketing Handbook. Bob who has a reputation for forward thinking has produced a must read for travel professionals who want to plan for the future.  Bob who will be 62 in August explained "The primary focus of the book is it takes every segment of travel and tourism, including distribution, and basically people in there talk about where their segment of the industry will be in 5-10 years."

 

A New Venue in Rotterdam

Ex-Holland America's SS Rotterdam is heading for Gibraltar for conversion. The Rembrandt as she was known when she finally finished her cruising days  is to be renamed Rotterdam once again and will return to her homeport. The Rotterdam Dry-dock Company purchased her in 2003 and restore the Rotterdam to her original condition, including that famed grey hull.  Plans are that she will be used as a cultural venue / hotel and conference facility in the Port of Rotterdam. 

Opt-in

Another issue we are concerned about are the new rules covering such things as unsolicited emails and faxes.  Whilst we are making every effort to comply with the new rules as they appear, it is never the less easy to run foul of something one is not aware of.  Currently we give our clients the option to "Opt-out"  of receiving our news letter but, this is a blanket opt-out which also has the effect of removing your name from our mailing list for such things as complimentary ship cruises (site inspections) and resort inspections as well as other complimentary offers we are able to make to our clients from time to time.  We have given this a lot of thought but the difficulty of managing multi-lists to cover everyone's requirement is more than we feel we can manage successfully at this time.
 

With this in mind, we have decided to make a start on "Opting - in" ... we realize that not everyone reads every issue of our newsletter so many people might miss this announcement (we always receive a good number of "out-of-office reminders" back from our clients - so we know you're all hard working folk... ).  So starting with the May  issue and running through the summer we will add this note to the bottom of our newsletter and respectfully request that you take just a second or two to complete the "Opt-in" form so you may continue to receive communications from WWTCA.