One of the things they tried to teach me in Business School was that a key part of a business strategy was to clearly understand both what you are and what you are not.

I was thinking about this as I was completing a Viking Romantic Danube river cruise this month. We put people on a variety of different river cruise lines based on what they tell is important to them. Viking is the largest operator by far in Europe, but they are certainly not the only game in town.

So… given the overwhelming amount of marketing that Viking does in the United States, why would someone choose a different river line?   There are a variety of answers to this question, but I think Viking articulates it very well.

Here’s what they have to say.

With Viking, there are:

• No casinos
• No children under 18
• No umbrella drinks
• No photographers
• No art auctions
• No charge for beer and wine with meals
• No charge for alternative restaurants
• No charge for WiFi
• No charge for launderettes
• No entrance fee for the spa
• No sales pressure for spa services
• No inside staterooms
• No smoking
• No lines
• No formal nights, butlers, or white gloves
• No nickel and diming

To be clear, some of these things only apply to Viking Ocean, and some other river cruise lines have similar promises, but I really like that they are unapologetic about what they don’t have.

I’m particularly impressed they don’t have any of those offensive umbrella drinks!  Actually, I’m not sure exactly how this a differentiator, but apparently they thought this through enough to articulate it.

The absence of a casino is probably a better barometer of the type of client Viking is trying to attract.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the ships that have casinos and art auctions, it’s just that it not what Viking does.

By the way, if you’re at all interested in following our recent cruise along the Danube, we posted daily video blogs, and you can view them here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA1r3eOMaDVFxRaTWvnN1x-8f9dFUpUIN

Enjoy!

Planning a Cruise?  I’d love to help!  Click here to get in touch today.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sue Bradley

Virtuoso Travel Week is tagged as “The Fashion Week for Travel”.

This is likely an apt comparison, as 6000 luxury travel advisors (mostly women) descend on Vegas, to meet travel vendors, learn, and find out what’s new in the world of travel.

Bob and I attended Travel Week again this year, and had vowed to post regularly so you could share our experience.  However, there’s something about being scheduled from 6:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night that quickly forces everything else to become a second priority.

I have a few updates that I will share over the coming weeks, but first, a story.

Lindblad Expeditions is a company that does expedition style cruising very well.  They are best known for their partnership with National Geographic.

Their story of “Kevin” captured my heart last week.

The story starts with a short video taken by some Lindblad guests during their Antarctica cruise.

I’m afraid that I can’t adequately describe the tension-filled drama with words alone, so if you’re interested, you can watch the video for yourself, here: https://youtu.be/2J8BUXV_VTk

The video shows a pod of Orca Whales attempting to knock a seal off a piece of ice.

The whales work in unison to try to dislodge the seal, but every time they manage to bump him off the ice, he scrambles back on before they have a chance to rip him in two.

After watching the first few attempts, I wondered if the fine folks at Lindblad were going to show us first-hand how the food chain works.  I watched the video with horror, spellbound.

Although the video footage is only a couple of minutes long, it was edited down from about two hours of live action taken from the deck of a Lindblad ship by sympathetic passengers.  The passengers nicknamed the seal “Kevin”, and cheered for his ultimate survival.

After some time, Kevin makes a successful run for it, and escapes the aggressive Orcas once and for all.

Disaster averted – and none of us city-dwellers actually had to witness Mother Nature doing what she does best (thank goodness).

But that’s not the end of the story.

The Lindblad folks concluded their video presentation at Virtuoso Travel Week by handing out “Go Kevin Go!” buttons.  In a stroke of marketing genius, they leveraged the ‘Kevin’ story, and promised us that every time they spotted one of us wearing our Kevin button, they would scan the barcode on it… and the person with the most scans at the end of the week would win a trip to Antarctica with Lindblad Expeditions.

Of course, this meant I spent every unscheduled moment of Virtuoso Travel Week stalking the Lindblad folks (sorry Lesa).

I was told that some people would even follow them into the restrooms looking to have their Kevin badges scanned (ewwwww).  I opted instead to sleep in the hallway outside their hotel rooms – ‘cause the toilet thing is just a bit too creepy.

If you see me blogging from Antarctica in the New Year, you’ll know I was successful. Cross your fingers!

Thanks Kevin.

Planning a Cruise?  I’d love to help!  Click here to get in touch today.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sue Bradley

Many people love to lament how cruising has changed in the past couple of decades, and long for what it used to be like – the ‘good old days’ of cruising.

Back in those days, a cruise was a real treat, and you could expect a stellar dining experience at every meal, top-notch entertainment, and attentive and personalized service.

I don’t disagree that cruising has changed, but I will offer two observations:

1. High quality food, service and entertainment are still available; you just have to pick the right cruise line.
2. Cruising is far cheaper now than it was in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.The way they have made it cheaper is to build bigger ships, and to make some of the services user-pay.

First let’s talk about food, service, and entertainment. 

If you’ve sailed on one of the mass-market cruise lines, you are already familiar with today’s levels of quality.  Many people express concern with the size of the ships, and diminishing quality of food and entertainment.

This may be true, but it still represents tremendous value compared to any other form of packaged vacation.  Many Caribbean cruises are well under $100/day for all your transportation, accommodation, food, and entertainment.  At this price, the value per dollar spent is very high.

For those who want more, you should be aware that the fastest growing segment of the cruise industry is on the luxury ships.  These ships are smaller (fewer than 1000 passengers), and feel much more like cruising did in the old days.  You can expect to pay between $250 and $500 per person, per day on these ships.  For some people, the added expense is well worth it.  Others will want to stay with the mass-market lines.

Next, let’s look at historical costing for cruises.

As mentioned above, you can cruise the Caribbean for less than $100 per day, and many other global destinations aren’t much more than this.  Put in its historical perspective, cruising has never been cheaper.  In fact, the cost of a luxury cruise now, is even cheaper than a mass market cruise in the 80s!

Stay with me….

I came across a copy of Cruise Travel Magazine from 1985, and here are some of the “deals” being advertised.  Remember the price advertised is the base fare, or the lowest possible price to get on board that sailing.  In other words, this is the price for an inside cabin at the front of the ship. The number in brackets is the cost in 2018 dollars:

Cruise Deals in 1985:

• HAL Rotterdam, 17-days departing Miami $2930 ($6563)
• NCL Norway, 7-days to Eastern Caribbean $1195 ($2677)
• Carnival Carnivale, 3-days to the Bahamas $290 ($650)
• RCL Sun Viking, 14-days to Eastern & Southern Caribbean $2265 ($5074)
• Sun Princess, 7-days to Southern Caribbean $1526 ($3418)

The average base price per day for the above sample-set:  $367.  A quickly run calculation on the average base price per day of a Caribbean cruise in 2017: $77.

Cruising is exponentially cheaper than it was a generation ago.

So, the bottom line here is that you CAN have the high quality food, entertainment and service that you used to get.  You can also get it for substantially less than it cost back then.

However, if you want to pay $77/day (which works just fine for lots of folks), you can expect the levels of quality and service that you get now on the mass market lines.

Planning a Cruise?  I’d love to help!  Click here to get in touch today.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sue Bradley

It used to be that when you did a tour of Europe, you would fly to Amsterdam, and haul your oversized luggage from the motor coach to a somewhat marginal hotel room, only to be ordered to have your bags outside your door for 6 pm so you could do the same thing all over again the next day.  You would work your way from Amsterdam, across the Benelux countries, through France, and then fly home from Rome, completely exhausted, and vowing to throw away your massive suitcase for good.

Needless to say that river cruising is a significant improvement over those days!

But there are some residual features from the days of the bus tours.  Perhaps most obviously, the majority of people going on a river cruise still fly to Amsterdam, and then hop on one of dozens of potential river ships and take a 7-day trip on the Rhine, to Switzerland, or a 14-day trip on the Danube, to Budapest.

These Rhine and Danube trips are definitely the most popular, especially with first time river cruisers, but they’re certainly not the only routes in Europe.

• For those with a particular love of the Dutch, you can sail round-trip from Amsterdam on the Rhine, Mosel, and Elbe rivers
• If France is more your speed, you can sail on the Rhone, Saone, or Seine Rivers.
  • The Seine River runs from Paris to the Atlantic, and spends some time in Normandy – perfect for WWII history enthusiasts.
  • There are also river cruises that run south from Paris down towards the French Riviera, for those wanting to see the French countryside.
  • Finally, there are river cruises in Bordeaux, which are particularly interesting for those that have an interest in wine – particularly during the harvest.
• Italy is also a river cruising destination, often round trip out of Venice on the Po River. Optional trips to Lake Como are often added to these.
• German river cruises are available on the Oder and Elbe Rivers. Most often people sail between Berlin and Prague.
• If you prefer to be further south in Europe, you can sail on the Douro River through Portugal and Spain.
• You can even take a river cruise to Russia or the Ukraine.

There are also river cruises in Asia, South America, Egypt, and even the United States.

Most of these “other” river cruises are between 7 and 16 days long, and you’ll have a wide choice of itineraries.  So while the classic Amsterdam to Budapest route is definitely worth considering, don’t feel bound by just one option.

Planning a Cruise?  I’d love to help!  Click here to get in touch today.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sue Bradley

Other than visiting Disney World, we really don’t have access to many castles in North America.  So, it’s not a surprise that the Highclere Castle has attracted so much attention.

Even if you’ve never heard of the Highclere Castle, you’ve almost certainly heard of Downton Abbey– the PBS series set in the Hampshire countryside, with this spectacular Victorian-era English manor as its backdrop.

Highclere Castle has a number of other “claims to fame” as well:

• It was the setting for the British comedy series ‘Jeeves and Wooster’, which starred a young Hugh Laurie before he became Doctor House.
• It is owned by the Earl of Carnarvon (a British Aristocracy designation that is inherited). One of the previous Earls of Carnarvon was partners with Howard Carter, and participated in the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in Egypt.  As a result, the Highclere castle has a display of ancient Egyptian artefacts.
• It was used as a hospital in World War I, and as a refugee center in WWII.
• It is the building where the British North America Act was signed into law in 1867 making Canada a sovereign nation. John A. MacDonald (Canada’s first Prime Minister) was on site for this signing.

This 14^thCentury building has a ton of history, and if you are one of those who appreciates such things, then it’s well worth a visit.

You can visit Highclere Castle as a pre or post-cruise add-on with certain Viking Ocean and River cruise itineraries.

For example, on Viking’s “Paris & the Heart of Normandy” river cruise, you can add Oxford and Highclere Castle as an optional 3-night extension at the end of your cruise.

First you travel from Paris to London on the high-speed train, and then transfer for the short trip to Oxford where you’ll stay for three nights near the Castle. The next day you tour Oxford University – this is the oldest English-speaking university in the world. You then tour the Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and a UNESCO world heritage site.  On the third day, you get special access to Highclere Castle as a result of an exclusive arrangement that Viking has made with the Earl of Carnarvon.

A couple of Viking’s ocean cruise itineraries offer the Oxford and Highclere Castle extension as well.  For example you can do it on either the “British Isles Explorer” or “Into the Midnight Sun”, both of which travel between Bergen and London.

Here’s a video about visiting Highclere Castle with Viking Cruises: https://youtu.be/T1race8opks

If you’re a Downton Abbey fan, this side trip is not to be missed.  Even if you’re just someone with an appreciation for historical buildings, you’ll get a lot out of this tour.

Planning a Cruise?  I’d love to help!  Click here to get in touch today.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sue Bradley