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Impressions from my first cruise.
Monday, 26th June 2017
Source : Joseph Fischer - Exclusive for 4Hoteliers.com

Joseph Fischer - Exclusive for 4Hoteliers.comExclusive: Last week I returned from a cruise trip to the Baltic Sea; During my long hospitality career, I had the privilege to travel to almost 80 different countries in five continents, I used conventional methods of travel but also less ‘conventional’ ones such as air balloons and submarines but never traveled on a cruise liner.

To be honest, I never had the urge to sail the seas and oceans. I always preferred to fly or drive to a destination and explore it. The idea of going onboard a mega cruise ship and visit 6 different destinations in 11 days was not my favorite first choice.

A family occasion made me join this cruise which started at Copenhagen and covered Germany â€" Rostock, Estonia - Tallinn, Russia - St. Petersburg, Finland - Helsinki and Sweden - Stockholm.

Some basic technical data on the ship: the NCL Getaway was built in a German Shipyard in 2014. This ship is 325.4 meters long, 63.3 meters high and almost 40 meters wide. The gross tonnage of the ship is 145,655 tons. The cost of construction US $ 1 billion. The mega-ship burns in average 250,000 gallons of fuel every week of cruising.

The ship can host 4,000 passengers and has a crew of 1,600+ employees.

The technical data cannot really describe the size of this mega ship. 20 different F&B outlets are catering the guests and crew members on a 24/7 hours basis.

The main dining room is located on the 15th deck and is working on Buffet style meals. The NCL system is “Free style”-Eat as much as you want and there is no formal dress code.

This is a bit like an “All-inclusive” hotel but with a twist: Alcohol and bottled drinks are extra. You can pay extra for a wine package and get your wine from a wine dispenser. No style, but I guess it’s very profitable.

The buffet changes on a daily basis, serving regular foods and speciality foods: Asian station, vegetarian station, grill station and Pasta station. During the cruise, the main dining room also offers special culinary events: “German evening”, “Asian Food evening”, “Russian food” and “Scandinavian evening”.

More pampered guests could choose one of the specialized restaurants for an extra charge, such as Italian, Asian and stake-house. These outlets offer a more formal, seat down full-service lunch or dinner and the food quality is obviously higher. We tried the Italian and the steak house and in both cases, we found it very good in terms of quality and price-value proposition.

On the last day at sea, my wife suggested that we should try the Indian buffet, which is aimed to cater a large number of Indian guests onboard and the food there was great. Many non-Indian guests choose this option.

Optional tours: The major advantage that the cruise ship offers are hassle-free, organized tours in each port. Cruise guests have a wide choice of ‘tailored tours’ that fit different crowds. There are many options in different languages including Chinese and tours for Indian guests.

We took one of these pre-organized tours in Stockholm. What you need to know about these tours is that you don't get to see much. The reason is simple: the group is always as fast as the slowest tour member. What we saw in Stockholm was the historical Town hall, an observation point over the old town, the Wasa Ship Museum and a 45-minute walk around the old town streets.

In St. Petersburg - a 2 days stop, we ordered a private guided tour with a car, driver and tour guide and that's a far preferable option.

During the cruise, the guests enjoy a full program of activities, shows, shopping bazaars, and - for those who like to gamble - there is the casino which many guest visit.

Organization of the whole cruise is truly amazing. To watch some 4,000 guests, get on-board and off-board in 60-minutes, clear security, border and customs is remarkable.

The unexpected elements: In our cruise, we had experienced several ‘last-minute’ changes that effected the cruise.

The original port of Stockholm was changed to a different port which was about an hour’s drive from Stockholm and guests needed to book transportation to get to the city.

The first port we were supposed to visit - Germany’s port of Warnemünde - had very strong winds, which prevented this mega-ship from entering the port. This resulted in a delay of a full day that ended the planed tours to Berlin and forced the Captain to skip the port of Tallinn Estonia.

Another unexpected delay was caused at the port of St. Petersburg. The ship was supposed to leave port in the early evening hours but due to a visit of President Putin in a football stadium near the port, all GPS navigation systems were blocked for the duration of the football match.

We ended up leaving St. Petersburg late in the evening and arrived in Helsinki 2 hours later then in the original timetable.

At the last day at sea, the captain and hotel director gave a lecture and Q&A about the ship’s technical data which I attended. To me, this lecture was one of the highlights of the cruise.

One point that came up was that in spite of cruise ships clearly getting larger, port infrastructure is not developed as fast as the cruise ships.

The Captain answered that the mega cruise ships are built mainly to sail on the oceans. The ship we sailed is being used for 9 months a year in the Caribbeans and 3 months a year in the Baltic Sea.
There is evidently a size limit to which these cruise ships can grow (bigger is not necessarily better…)

On a different note, some European hubs for cruise ships â€" Venice, Barcelona, Dubrovnik - who once saw a big blessing in these cruise business, are now trying to control, limit the numbers of cruise ships visiting these ports. The best description can be found in a most recent article on the Daily Telegraph, titled: “Crowds and cruise ships have 'ruined' Dubrovnik”

Are the borders blurring between the cruise industry and the hotel industry?

I find it interesting to watch global hotel groups- Up until most recent days, none of the big global hotel groups saw the cruise line business as direct competition. I, for one, think that they are wrong.

However, some hotel brands see the potential in cruise business and last week, Ritz Carlton - a leading luxury lodging brand which is part of Marriott, the world's largest lodging group - announced its intentions to enter the cruise business.

See an article titled: “Ritz-Carlton Is Building the Anti-Cruise Ship
Its industry-first brand extension, the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, will set sail in 2019â€"disrupting two industries in one fell swoop”

Interesting times ahead...

Joseph - Yossi - Fischer the CEO of Vision Hospitality & Travel - international lodging & Travel Solutions and a regular contributor to 4Hoteliers.com with exclusive writing and views.

This is strictly an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted.

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