Cruise
Royal Caribbean Cruising To New Records
Royal Caribbean International reports that it set set new records recently, with the largest single booking day and the highest volume booking week, March 26 – April 1, in its 53-year history. The strong demand and new bookings come on the heels of more than 1.5 million guests having sailed with the line since January 2021, alongside consistently record-high guest satisfaction ratings across its ships and private destinations, Perfect Day at CocoCay in The Bahamas and Labadee on the north coast of Haiti. Michael Bayley, president and CEO, Royal Caribbean International, said that:...
Holland America Is Back In Canada
Holland America Line will be the first cruise line to return to Canadian cruising following a more than two year industrywide pause due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Koningsdam will call at Victoria, British Columbia, Saturday, April 9, restarting the cruise industry in Canada. The following day the ship will end its current seven-day cruise at Port of Vancouver, its homeport for the summer Alaska season. Gus Antorcha, president of Holland America Line, said: “We are thrilled to be the first cruise line back into Canada after such a long absence, and we look forward to...
Celebrity Beyond Arrives
Celebrity Cruises’ President and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo honoured the thousands of engineers, architects, designers, contractors, shipyard employees and Celebrity Cruises teams as the brand took delivery of Celebrity Beyond today (April 6). And it was a particularly special moment, marking the shipyard’s first physical delivery ceremony since the pandemic. As part of the historic moment, Lutoff-Perlo was joined by Royal Caribbean Group’s President and CEO Jason Liberty and the ship’s captain, Kate McCue, as they officially took ownership from the shipyard and completed the...
Holland America Steps Up To Help Ukrainian Refugees
Holland America Line's Volendam will be used to accommodate Ukrainian refugees as part of an agreement announced by Netherlands and City of Rotterdam government officials. The ship will dock in Rotterdam for three months to provide a temporary home for approximately 1,500 Ukrainians, part of a larger commitment from the Netherlands to accommodate 50,000 people who fled the war in their homeland. Gus Antorcha, president, Holland America Line, said: “We are in a unique position to accommodate the immediate need for food and housing, so we felt it was very important to work with...
Hurtigruten Group Takes Stake In Metropolitan Touring
Hurtigruten Group has acquired a ‘significant minority stake’ in Metropolitan Touring, one of South America’s leading travel companies and pioneers in the Galápagos Islands. The long-term investment sees Hurtigruten Group take a 24.9% share in the company with headquarters in Quito, Ecuador, and further demonstrates Hurtigruten Group’s global growth ambitions in the adventure travel market. CEO of Hurtigruten Group Daniel Skjeldam said: “This investment signifies our growth journey, and we are delighted to invest in Metropolitan Touring, a proud South American company...
Clear Sailing Ahead
The cruise industry got some long-awaited good news yesterday (March 30) as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lifted its health notice on cruise travel. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) was quick to applaud the CDC's March 30 decision by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to altogether remove the Travel Health Notice for cruising -- a move that recognizes the effective public health measures in place on cruise ships and begins to level the playing field, between cruise and similarly situated venues on land, for the first time since March...
A Helping Hand For Ukraine
Toronto's The Bob Family Travel Team at Travelonly has become the latest travel industry firm to lend a financial helping hand to Ukrainians fleeing their homeland. The agency is sending almost 100 clients, friends and 15 travel agents from Travelonly to Eastern Europe in May, with some of the visited countries bordering Ukraine and others now home to Ukrainian refugees. “It is nice to know not one client has cancelled this trip since the war started and although some have questions we all plan to go forward,” says The Bob Family Travel's Pat Probert. The Bob Family and the...
Celebrity Cruises Changing The Faces Of Travel Marketing
Celebrity Cruises is launching a bold new initiative to change the meaning of “all-inclusive” in the travel industry. Recognizing the need to improve the representation of all people who travel in marketing materials, the cruise line has created both a new campaign and the world’s first free to use, ‘open source’ travel image library. The campaign and collection -- ‘The All-Inclusive Photo Project’ (AIPP) -- aims to start a movement, calling on travel companies to help address the lack of diversity in travel marketing imagery. The new images are being unveiled today...