For a holiday week there was a lot of things going on, although we talk some about the ongoing situation in the Gulf of Mexico. Who knew that oil naturally seeps into the Gulf? BTW the fake BP Twitter account that we’ve been mentioning is “BP Global PR“
This week Disney Dream celebrated a major construction milestone as the last block of the hull was put in place.
Norwegian introduces a unique new opportunity – for the privacy of your stateroom, plus they’ve installed the largest chandelier at sea AND have announced that lifeboat drills will soon not require lifejackets on all ships except Pride of America.
The keel is laid on Oceania’s newest ship Riviera and Azamara Club Cruises wants us to remember that their butlers are not just cabin attendants.
Royal Caribbean has tweaked the Crown & Anchor Society benefits (although we’re not sure that any substantial changes have been made) and they’ve announced an exciting partnership with Dreamworks Animation.
This week there were quite a few long stories -
Azamara, who really needed a direction gets a new name and a new attitude. Maybe this one will work?
Costa’s newest completes technical trials, and the Seabourn triplets are getting renovations.
A new villainous show is coming to Disney and so are some family friendly shore excursions.
Princess looses a ship when Royal Princess heads to P&O while Silversea takes delivery of their newest Silver Spirit.
Oceania’s massive owner’s suites on Marina will showcase Ralph Lauren.
Carnival Dream isn’t compatible with a pier in San Juan.
A few of Holland America’s ships are getting some really cool tech…
We got a request to talk about a few other things from our Westerdam trip and there’s some new video’s up for you to check out as well!
Azamara Cruises – the two-ship brand launched in 2007 with the 694-guest Azamara Journey and sister ship Azamara Quest – today became “Azamara Club Cruises,” with a newly refined focus, and a series of new attributes designed for upmarket, experienced travelers.
“This isn’t a strategy of going ‘from good to great’,” said Azamara Club Cruises President & CEO Larry Pimentel. “This is about taking an already great product and making it exceptional.”
Tapped to take the helm of Azamara Cruises in July of this year, Pimentel spent several weeks talking with travel agents, past guests and press to determine how to make his great-to-exceptional goal a reality. He also tapped a small new team focused 100 percent on Azamara, including VP of Sales & Marketing Edie Bornstein, AVP of Hotel Operations Bert Van Middendorp, Director of Marketing Signe Bjorndal, Director of National Accounts Michelle Nevin, and an eight-member field sales team dedicated solely to Azamara.
Together, Pimentel and team shaped the new Azamara Club Cruises, whose most distinguishing new attributes will be in effect by April 2010.
Azamara Club Cruises will visit 140 ports in 50 countries in 2010, with itineraries featuring more overnight stays to allow guests to immerse themselves in communities and cultures. Among the overnight locations are Istanbul, Turkey; Sorrento, Italy, which offers a host of tour options along the Amalfi Coast and Capri; a full three days and two nights in St. Peters burg, Russia, on Azamara’s Scandinavia and Russia itineraries; and multiple overnight stays in Azamara’s Southeast Asia region, including Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong.
“We’re going to slow down the tempo, and allow our guests to not just see the destination, but to live it,” said Pimentel. “Consider destinations like St. Tropez or St. Petersburg, Russia. If you’ve experienced them only by day, you haven’t really experienced them. With Azamara, through more overnight stays and late-night stays, you can.”
The destination focus of Azamara Club Cruises inspired the brand’s new tagline – “You’ll love where we take you” – and will extend to its shore excursions, too, an essential ingredient to allow guests to truly experience a community and its culture. Azamara has created distinctive two-day packages tailored to the overnight destinations, to make it easy for guests to immerse themselves in each location, whether it’s Dubrovnik, Croatia; Odessa, Ukraine; Livorno (Florence), Italy, Warnemunde (Berlin), Germany, or London, in addition to Sorrento and St. Petersburg.
Azamara also will offer experiences such as a two-night package from Bangkok to Laos; an overnight tour from Hiroshima to Osaka via bullet train; a three-night experience from Mumbai including a visit to the Taj Mahal; overnight tours in Israel between Ashdod and Cairo, and a Grand Egypt tour featuring the best of both Luxor and Cairo.
Among Azamara’s specialty tours include a Ferrari driving tour in Civitavecchia, Italy; a walk down memory lane in Liverpool with the “In the steps of The Beatles” tour; a private demonstration of chocolate flavors in Dubrovnik; a “Theatre A La Carte” evening in London; Croatian liqueur tasting in Zadar; an Imperial Russian Court evening at Tsarskoye Selo in St. Petersburg; an evening gondola serenade in Venice; and high tea at the Burj al Arab Hotel in Dubai.
Praised for its dining experience since its founding, Azamara will continue to place a heavy emphasis on fine cuisine, and will expand its focus on wine to include vintages from boutique wineries around the world. Guests will have the opportunity to taste high quality wines that may be unavailable at home, because the selected vineyards produce a strictly limited quantity each year, distributed primarily locally. The featured wines will be offered complimentary at lunches and dinners on every sailing.
Wellness and vigor will be a core component of the Azamara Club Cruises experience, too, with onboard and land-based experiences designed to help guests feel and look healthier and more youthful. Azamara’s aim in wellness and vigor is to help guests balance their physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual needs through massages, facials and other spa treatments, as well as acupuncture, yoga, Pilates, and enrichment programs.
The newly refined brand also is intensely focused on offering an intangible attribute essential to a successful upmarket product: exceptional service.
“Extraordinary service is paramount with Azamara Club Cruises,” said Pimentel. “We know every travel and hospitality organization proclaims it’s committed to great service, so what will make Azamara stand out? First, our butlers will be trained to be true English butlers, to offer that fine balance of anticipatory, pampering, yet non-intrusive service to guests in every suite.” Guests in staterooms will be served by the line’s host of experienced stateroom attendants.
Azamara Club Cruises also will offer many inclusive amenities, with the following included in the cruise fare beginning with the first voyages in April 2010 on Azamara Journey and Azamara Quest: a specific brand of bottled water offered at no charge throughout the voyage, whether in public venues or in staterooms; specialty coffees and teas; housekeeping and dining gratuities; shuttlebus service to/from port communities, where available; destination-influenced entertainment and enrichment programs; most meals and room service; house wine at lunches and dinners; and self-service laundry. Specialty dining in Azamara’s intimate Prime C steakhouse and the Mediterranean-influenced Aqualina will be complimentary for suite guests for the duration of their cruise. Cruisers who can’t get enough of Azamara will be invited to join the line’s new loyalty program, “Le Club Voyage,” with specific features and benefits yet to be announced.
And this week we’re both sick… On the plus side, you can’t catch it from us – and it’s not the hogfluenza…
The brands of Royal Caribbean are expanding their e-doc program, and Celebrity is rolling out a seasonal wine program.
Carnival is considering a return to Europe and Princess may be getting ready to order a new ship…
Port Everglades is welcoming 4 new ships in the coming months – 3 in the next few weeks alone…
Princess looks for new acts…
Juneau moves forward with pier expansion plans that the cruise lines aren’t interested in, and a line returns to Alaska for the first time in 40 years – with an Alaskan itinerary that departs from Southampton!
Look for Sailor Mickey in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
A quick reminder for you as well – there won’t be a show next week or the week after as we’ll be onboard Holland America’s Westerdam.
Have a happy Thanksgiving!
Azamara Cruises, Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International believe that their guests’ cruise experience begins before the first suitcase is packed. Today, the cruise lines announced a new electronic cruise document, or “eDocs,” and luggage tag program designed to offer guests a dynamic, one-of-a-kind pre-cruise documentation experience and simultaneously give travel agents an opportunity to promote their own business. A personalized, interactive, visually appealing, web-based format offers guests all the information they need prior to their cruise, including travel agency contact details, information on shore excursion choices and various onboard offerings available during the guests’ particular cruise, travel and documentation instructions, and much more. Once the booking has been finalized, eDocs will be issued as early as 49 days prior to sailing.
In an effort to offer guests more information in a visually appealing way with less burden on the environment, all Azamara, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean bookings made on or after December 13, 2009, will generate eDocs as the default format for guest travel documents. eDocs also will be the default format for any bookings made before December 13, 2009, that didn’t include a selection of a hard-copy guest travel documents preference. Guests will access their eDocs via each cruise line’s consumer website: Azamara Cruises, Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International.
The technology behind the eDocs brings with it various conveniences for the guests and travel partners who use them. Not only do the eDocs give guests and travel partners around-the-clock access to important pre-cruise information, they also offer hyperlinks to all pre-cruise activity reservation opportunities. Additionally, eDocs offer a table of contents with hyperlinks that take the guest to the exact page they’re interested in, the ability to email a copy to friends and family, and the option to print specific pages. As an added bonus, the eDocs that Azamara, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean will offer are visually stunning, colorful and easy to read.
Celebrity and Royal Caribbean will offer guests the option of ordering printed cruise documents, for a fee of $35 per document. The up-market, smaller-ship brand Azamara, however, will waive this fee for its guests who order printed cruise documents.
It is also possible for travel partners and guests to self-print eDocs at no charge using a printer-friendly format; however, this version will lack the interactive qualities of the online eDocs.
For all bookings made through travel partners, the Azamara Cruises, Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International eDocs will be customized to display the travel agency name and phone number. Travel partners can access eDocs through the three lines’ travel agent portal, CruisingPower website.
Not only will the new eDocs program help travel partners avoid shipping costs by eliminating the need to mail printed documents to their clients, but travel partners also have options around how their clients receive their eDocs. Agents can receive eDocs on behalf of a client, they can give the cruise line the client’s email address or provide the client with the booking number so that the client can self-manage their eDocs (which saves the travel partner valuable administrative time). Alternatively, travel partners can offer their clients the opportunity to purchase a printed document.
A new eDocs luggage tag system designed to save guests time at the pier and streamline the onboard luggage sorting and delivery process is a crucial part of the three cruise lines’ revamped pre-cruise planning and documentation experience. Qualified guests may request luggage tags to be mailed to them by completing the request form available on each brand’s website. With the new program, guests will receive, via mail, a complimentary set of eight pre-printed, self-adhesive, color-coded and personalized luggage tags. Luggage tags can be requested as soon as documents are issued and must be requested no later than 14 days prior to sailing. Alternatively, travel partners can request that a client’s luggage tags be mailed either to the client or the travel agency by providing a mailing address at the time of booking; these will be mailed 13 days prior to sailing.
The new eDocs luggage tag program is already available for Royal Caribbean International’s guests, and will become available for Azamara Cruises’ and Celebrity Cruises’ guests beginning November 16, 2009.
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