Silversea Cruises is underlining the importance of its successful luxury expedition operation in the new, redesigned version of its website, Silversea.com. The website's message is to “Live the stories you’d love to tell” which echoes in the company’s new brochures and marketing materials. The website is slated as the first glimpse of Silversea’s new visual identity.
The new look integrates the expedition cruises with the more traditional itineraries, rather than having expedition cruises separate on a microsite. Expedition cruises to Alaska, for example, are clearly labeled in red as Silversea Expeditions, but they are listed together with the more mainstream sailings.
“The interest in expedition cruising continues to be on the rise, among both affluent baby boomers and seasoned travelers wanting to further enrich their already wide knowledge of more traditional and established destinations,” said Brad Ball, director of corporate communications for the cruise line. “More and more travelers today want products that provide them with bragging rights and allow them to cross off bucket-list destinations. It just makes good business sense to grow our company with vessels that focus on in-depth exploration.”
The company’s 296-passenger Silver Cloud (1994) and Silver Wind (1995) and the 382-passenger Silver Shadow and Silver Whisper (both 2001) were followed by a new, larger ship design with Silver Spirit, which debuted in December 2009 with a capacity of 540 passengers.
Moving in a different direction, which proved very successful, Silversea’s first step into expedition cruising was the all-suite, 132-passenger Silver Explorer, built in 1989. After a very extensive makeover in 2008, the ship was christened Prince Albert II after the prince of Monaco, a dedicated environmentalist. With an ice-rated hull, she is dedicated to 10- and 21-day polar sailings in the Arctic Circle in the summer months, with visits to the Svalbard archipelago, Iceland and Greenland, and to Antarctica and South America during the winter.
Silver Explorer’s success led to a complete makeover in 2013 for the 100-guest Silver Galapagos, which brought along its license to sail in the Galapagos Islands when Silversea took over Candoros S.A. and its ship.
In March 2014, the 128-passenger Silver Discoverer similarly underwent a huge refurbishment that transformed the former Clipper Odyssey into a signature Silversea vessel. Deployed in exotic bucket-list destinations from Polynesia, Micronesia and the Russian Far East, Silver Discoverer also sails the Kimberley, Western Australia and Alaska itineraries.
In addition to the increased focus on expedition cruises, the new Silversea site is geared for easy identification of special interest cruising and has icons indicating wine cruises, L’Ecole des Chefs sailings, bridge sailings and those with gentleman hosts on board.
Another enhancement is the site’s responsive design, making it visually attractive and well-suited for any screen size. Silversea sees more and more travelers searching the Web from a variety of mobile devices and believes that websites designed only for desktop computer use are losing relevance. The new generation website caters to travelers who access information across multiple devices, including desktops, tablets and smartphones.
“As with our new visual identity, we wanted our website's new design to reflect the uniqueness of the Silversea luxury cruise experience,” said Kristian Anderson, senior vice president and general manager for the Americas at the cruise line.
The Details
Silversea Cruiseswww.silversea.com