As the cruise industry prepares to rebound, the expedition market is poised to be one of its strongest sells. During this year’s Seatrade Cruise Virtual: Expedition Cruising conference, executives from the segment expressed high hopes for the future, both near and far.
For 2021 alone, the outlook includes a total of 14 expedition newbuild ships and four conversions. Silversea Cruises is transforming its Silver Wind to an ice-class hull, as it did for Silver Cloud back in 2017, and Hurtigruten is bringing three of its Norwegian coastal ships into the expedition fold. Besides existing players, several new-to-expedition brands such as Crystal Cruises and Viking are jumping in as well.
First-Time Cruisers Are Drawn to Expedition Cruising
The expedition rush, however, is “not just a temporary trend.” According to Roberto Martinoli, president and CEO of Silversea, the market commands some of the highest prices in the entire industry with equally high returns, and it generates value for the remainder of cruising as newcomers to the market pleasantly discover that it’s not what they originally thought.
Ultimately, there’s an untapped audience and a “hunger for what we do,” said Sven-Olof Lindblad, CEO of Lindblad Expeditions. “A growing number of people want to experience nature.”
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Herve Bellaiche, chief sales and marketing officer for Ponant, is also seeing a lot of nature-loving, first-time cruisers on expedition cruises in addition to repeat travelers applying their vouchers from canceled cruises. It all amounts to “tremendous demand” and a fully booked season onboard the line’s newest Le Commandant Charcot PC 2-rated icebreaker, set to come online this year. (The lower the number, the stronger the hull is versus, say, more common PC 5 and PC 6 versions. Crystal Cruises’ 2021-launched Crystal Endeavor is also PC 2, for example.)
“People are willing to cruise again,” he said, and of the 29 million cruisers per year, 300,000 are expedition cruisers with major growth expected.
Crystal Endeavor launches this year as a luxury expedition ship.
Credit: 2021 Crystal CruisesThe Expedition Cruiser Cares About Sustainability in Cruising
Demographically, expedition guests are “well-educated” and “well-traveled,” according to Geoffrey Kent, founder and co-chairman of Abercrombie & Kent (A&K), and more are now taking their families along. He calls it an “unlimited market” with “huge potential.”
Asta Lassesen, CEO of Hurtigruten Expeditions, adds that the expedition cruiser profile is changing, and the industry is driving that change. Guests want “more sustainable travel,” she said, and new ship designs offer just that.
With hybrid-powered vessels relying more on zero-footprint electricity, there is “not only the need and not only the willingness, but also the extreme drive from people to protect nature and the beautiful surroundings in which these ships thank their right of existence,” said Patrick Janssens, CEO of Shipyard De Hoop.
In fact, “the actual design is influenced by our expedition leaders” focused on “sustainable tourism,” said Josh Leibowitz, president of Seabourn Cruise Line. This extends to everything from low-impact mudrooms where passengers can properly clean debris off boots and clothing to the zoom capacity of mounted cameras for viewing wildlife from a safe distance.
Expedition ships also serve as a model for the future.
“Expedition cruise ships are perhaps the Teslas of the cruise industry,” said Per Eriksson, sustainable designer at Tillberg Design of Sweden. “They are the forebears of what we will see in a much wider range later on.”
Such innovations include the means to load rigid inflatable boats solidly without bobbing before lowering them into the water, said Loris Di Giorgio, senior vice president of sales for Fincantieri’s merchant ships division. Incredibly, there are even developments on the horizon to permit otherworldly dining below the ice, according to De Hoop’s Janssens.
“When it comes to expedition cruise, it’s about getting close; it’s about getting as close to nature or whatever destination you’re going to and having a firsthand kind of experience,” said Tillberg’s Eriksson, and such gadgets and toys accommodate that.
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Now it’s just a matter of getting past the novel coronavirus to sail again. Hurtigruten’s Lassesen thinks that it all depends on the speed of vaccinations and achieving herd immunity, and hopes there will be an opportunity to return by this summer. Lindblad believes that more lines will begin to require inoculations to board, which he admits is easier to do on smaller ships like those in the expedition market.
However, it may be “too early to impose that,” according to Ponant’s Bellaiche, who considers that there’s not yet enough vaccines, at least in Europe, to cover all guests and crew. Currently, he said, “governments are reluctant to open their borders,” but cruise lines are set to resume.
“We’re ready to go and can’t wait,” said A&K’s Kent.
