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Posted on February 15, 2007 - by Ralph Grizzle

Opportunity Knocks

In this age of e-commerce and warehouse-size superstores, Luther Clegg is something of an anomaly. While the Greensboro-resident remains part of the retail revolution, the mechanism that drives his merchandise is not bottom-line pricing or the World Wide Web. It is a 1977 Buick. You see, Luther Clegg still peddles his wares the old-fashioned way: door-to-door.

“Miracle Cloth,” Clegg says while holding up the all-purpose polishing cloth. “They named it right. It will take out scratches and remove rust. 1001 uses. Never wash it. Keep it in a Ziplock bag, and it will last a long time.”

At a time when the world seems steadfast on moving increasingly toward impersonal sales venues – the internet and mail order shopping – Luther Clegg serves as a living reminder that door-to-door salesmanship and the personal touch still have a place in this ever-changing world.

A Brisk Business
On the trunk of his Buick, Clegg lays a black suitcase on its side and opens it. He shows how he once presented the Fuller Brush merchandise that he sold from 1956 until 1962. “Selling for Fuller Brush was hard,” he says. “They gave you the worst territory in town, just to see if you could cut it. I had to order $200 worth of merchandise a week. I got a $20 production discount, which was my take. So I had to sell other things to keep my head above water.”

Those other things included household-cleaning supplies and other products that now represent Clegg’s sole sources of income.

How is it going for Clegg? While he can’t provide specific sales analysis – in fact, he uses a pad and carbon paper to write receipts – Clegg can tell you he has a “hard time keeping up” with demand. Beginning his rounds in the early afternoon, he returns home each night – most times after 10 – with an “inch thick of invoices,” which he tallies up before making his nightly bank deposit.

His Own Man
Probably the height of his self-sufficiency took place the time he performed surgery on himself to save $50. While pruning a tree for one of his customers, the ax he was using fell on his shin, cutting a gash that exposed bone. Clegg limped to his car and drove to the emergency room. But upon being told the cost to treat and stitch the wound, he turned and drove himself home. There, he poured alcohol on the gash and stitched it – with fishing line no less. He still has a scar to show the shortcomings of his medical handiwork. But to Clegg it was worth the savings.

When we visited Clegg in May, his hip was giving way. It hurt him so much that he practically had to crawl up stairs – “like a baby,” he says – lugging his wares. A few days before our interview, Clegg was scheduled to enter the hospital for hip surgery. (Apparently, he felt this was beyond the scope of his limited medical abilities.) Nonetheless, the worn out hip did not keep Clegg from going to work each day right up until his operation.

Clegg works in what should be his golden years because he must. His rent has more than tripled in past years, from $75 to $275 a month. Plus, Clegg needs to earn extra cash to keep his favorite charities going – the Bible League and other organizations that distribute the “good book” worldwide. “I try to do a little good with what little I make,” he says. “My main goal is to get out Bibles to countries where Christians are being persecuted. I want as many points as I can accumulate when I get to heaven.”

A Family Tradition
Clegg inherited his work ethic from his father. Born in 1869, W.F. Clegg manufactured cigars in Greensboro beginning in the late 1800s. His factory was situated across from the train station, and with such proximity to travelers coming and going, the elder Clegg soon began to offer sandwiches and coffee, and eventually, rooms.

In 1891, the business was expanded to incorporate Hotel Clegg. Young Luther, born in 1919, remembers visiting the hotel and the cigar factory on the third floor above the guestrooms. “I could barely look over the table where the women were rolling cigars,” he says.

Clegg’s father lost nearly everything during the Depression. In 1941, he was broke and dying at Wesley Long Hospital. Clegg went with his mother and sister to visit the ailing patriarch. From the side of his father’s bed, Clegg watched something about the size of a bumblebee exit and fly out a partially opened window.

“Did you see that?” Clegg asked his mother. She did not.

“Did you?” he asked his sister. No.

“I think it was his soul leaving his body,” Clegg says all these years later. “Whatever it was, it sure knew where it was going.”

Following his father’s death, Clegg took on the responsibility of caring for his mother, a role he played for the next 37 years. He still mourns her death. “She lived 97 years, three months and 15 days,” Clegg says reflectively.

On his own since 1978, Clegg never married. “I thought taking care of my mother was more important than marriage,” he says. “I guess the Lord will have to pick me out somebody.”

A Bag Full Of Goodies
Clegg’s father left his son with a fine appreciation for numbers. His reality, in fact, seems to be steeped in the value of things, including his own merchandise. “Perma Scour,” he says. “Cleans without scratching surfaces. Rosemary Crank [one of regular Clegg's customers] dropped one in her garbage disposal. Hardly hurt it. $1.98.”

Carbon steel scissors. “16.50,” he says. “They’re the only scissors that will cut silk without causing it to unravel.” Garden shears. “$22.50. Painted orange so that you won’t lose them. Clips on to your belt.” Clear Magic. “If you have a dog and it urinates on your rug or something, this will take it out. $12.06.”

In 1937, he had surgery on a hernia: “$25,” he says, adding, “I made a deal with the doctor.”

The house on Mendenhall Street where he lived with his mother in 1941: $65 per month. His salary as a teenager for delivering baked goods: $18 a week. The amount he earned on his first day as a nine-year-old selling the Saturday Evening Post: a nickel. The Navy paid him $21 a month in 1942.

His father paid $540 a year for Clegg to attend Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia. The rent his father paid for his cigar factory: $30 a month.
Giving Thanks

With no wife, no children, his mother and father gone, Luther Clegg is not entirely alone. “He probably knows more people than anybody else in Greensboro,” Zelle Jester says.

And most folks do welcome a visit from Clegg. The lean senior citizen shows up dressed as the professional that he is. He wears a tie clip that bears his name and a pocket protector with several pens – tools of his trade.

He also brings with him a sweetness that is immediately apparent to anyone he meets. “He doesn’t have an unkind thought in his head,” Jester says.

Clegg will sometimes show up with a loaf of bread or a carton of sweet rolls, intended as gifts for his customers. “He just wants to give something back,” Jester says. “He wants to thank people for what they’re doing for him.”

As if a visit from Luther Clegg weren’t thanks enough.

Posted on December 1, 2006 - by Ralph Grizzle

Hello Down There

Cruise line executives have long contended that they compete not against one another but against the larger vacation market. That argument, in fact, allowed Carnival Corporation to pass regulatory and antitrust hurdles in acquiring P&O Princess in 2002. In a story that is now well known throughout the industry, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. was left standing at the alter without a bride when Carnival Corporation made a last-minute hostile bid for Princess P&O.

What’s not as well known is that in an attempt to quash Carnival’s bid, RCCL argued in a letter to travel agents that, if approved, the newly merged Carnival/Princess company would control more than 50 percent of all cruise berths, hence imposing an effective monopoly on the market. Carnival countered that it, like all other cruise lines, competed in the overall vacation market, of which cruising represents less than 3 percent. U.S. Federal Trade Commission officials nodded in Carnival Corp.’s favor and approved the merger by a narrow margin.

It should come as little surprise then that cruise lines look to their competitors in the broader vacation market for inspiration and ideas to invigorate their own products. What is it that Las Vegas and Orlando do so well to attract vacationers — and keep them coming back for more?

“We see ourselves in the vacation market, not just the cruise market, so we look at the entire global vacation industry for inspiration,” Carnival Cruise Lines’ President and CEO Bob Dickinson tells Cruise and Ferry Info. “Las Vegas and Orlando are certainly the two most successful vacation destinations in the United States, but we also look at places such as the Middle East.”

Dickinson says Carnival is keeping an eye on tourism developments in Dubai. “There’s a lot of investment there, and a lot of new ideas in the process,” the Carnival chief says. “We look at how consumers react to what’s going on there and elsewhere. We’re just continually looking at trends worldwide.”

Rather than take a leadership role in developing innovative features to attract consumers, cruise lines often are followers. Carl Gustaf Rotkirch, vice president of sales for cruise at Aker Finnyards, characterizes the cruise industry as being “a conservative business” and one that approaches innovative ideas with caution.

“They are usually just applying technology that has become feasible on the landside first, then they think it could be interesting on a cruise ship as well,” he says. “Take the big movie screens on the Princess ships, for example. That was quite a small step, even though as a feature on a ship it turned out to be a very good idea. The rock-climbing walls on Royal Caribbean ships was also quite a good idea, but again it was something that was taken from a land-based activity to a ship.”

Rotkirch credits the cruise industry with doing a good job of “scanning the entertainment industry” to stay on top of trends but adds that many of the attractions on cruise ships only emulate what can be found at land-based vacation venues. Don’t cruise ship passengers deserve something better? Something new? Something they can’t get on land?

Flights of Fantasy
After all, designers are supposed to dream, aren’t they? While it’s true that designers take inspiration from external sources, in the end, it is their minds that conjure ideas of fantasy vessels and fantasy features on vessels. Fantasy, in fact, was the name that Carnival Cruise Lines applied to its early 1990 series of ships. Designed to revolutionize cruising, those ships were the brainchild of Joe Farcus, the industry’s most prolific ship designer.

Farcus, who lives in Miami, says he takes his inspiration for new ship design not so much from field trips to vacation destinations (after all, he lives in one) but from a lifetime of acquired experience. The experiences that influence his work today began to take form when he was 15 years old. It was then, during a summer job of cleaning the pool at the Deauville Hotel, not far from where he lives now, that Farcus acquired “a kind of vision, seeing lots of people in leisure-time activities and watching people sitting by the pool all day.”

The pool did not have a waterslide, the popular feature that Farcus conceived of for Carnival ships, but working at a hotel gave him an inbred intuition for what people are looking for in their vacations. In later years, that intuition was supplemented by travel and by everyday experience. “Every bit of it influences me,” he says. “The experience of the past, the experience of today, the experience of travel and of living — the mix of all of that influences the evaluation process that I use to go from the germ of an idea to the finished idea of a ship.”

Not all ideas germinate inside the mind, however. Some are wholly derivative of a specific place. No flights of fantasy; just replications of real place. And nowhere is that more apparent than on Holland America Line’s new — and newly refurbished ships.

Though the company has its roots in Rotterdam, inspiration for Explorations Cafe can be found just around the corner from its offices in Seattle, Washington. Installed fleetwide as part of the line’s Signature of Excellence program, Explorations Cafe was inspired by Barnes & Noble, says Pieter Rijkaart, director of newbuilds at Holland America Line. And indeed many reviewers have described Explorations Cafe, which features a coffee shop and an area to browse newspapers, books and the internet, as an upscale Starbucks (also headquartered in Seattle) or a Barnes & Noble.

Similarly, the line’s popular reservations-only restaurant Pinnacle Grill was inspired by restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. Surely, someone at the executive level visited these places and thought, “This would work on a ship.”

Captain Nemo, Where Are You?
It’s difficult to predict what may appear on cruise ships of the future. Cruise executives and ship designers are reluctant to talk about what they have tucked away in their minds or on the drawing boards for their own newbuilds. “I’m frankly not comfortable talking about what future ships could look like,” Dickinson says. “After all, why tip the hand to anybody else?”

His chief architect, however, has spoken of dreams of one day putting a roller coaster on a ship; other designers dream of ski slopes wrapped around the funnel.

The industry possibly could do with innovations that cannot be replicated — or cannot be replicated with the same degree of success — by land-based destinations. Cruise lines need only look to Atlantis, the popular resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, as testimony for people’s fascination with the underwater world. And exposing people to the underwater world is something the cruise lines could do better than land-based destinations.

Imagine a ship where passengers board the elevator to the bottom deck where they emerge in an underwater lounge with exterior lights piercing the dark sea to cast light on marine life and reefs. Naval architects say it is possible to construct a partial glass-bottom hull to allow for a Captain Nemo-style lounge that would allow patrons to view underwater life.

“I think the sky is the limit,” says Aker Finnyards’ Rotkirch. “Going down to a glass bottom and looking at the underwater world is one thing to think about. An even better idea might be to have a small submarine that you launch from a ship to allow passengers to look at the underwater reefs. In many ways, we are only now waking up the possibilities of what we can apply to cruise ships.”

Sidebar: Ship Or Amusement Park?
In years past, cruising was only about soaking up the sun and having a great vacation, but increasingly ships are becoming entertainment centers. With ever larger ships overwhelming small ports, experienced cruisers often ask, “Why bother getting off the ship at all?”

And cruise lines are looking to provide more reasons for passengers to stay on board. Royal Caribbean International’s Freedom-class ships truly are self-contained entertainment resorts. The line’s Project Genesis will go several strides further, featuring “amazing experiences for people and so many options,” as one Royal Caribbean exec has said, adding that the new ship will be a “show stopper.”

Carnival Cruise Lines’ philosophy, however, takes a different tack. Though the cruise line’s President and CEO, Bob Dickinson, believes in the buzz created by innovative design features, he says that Carnival itself is not a “real push-the-envelope” company. His ship designer, Joe Farcus, adds that: “I would venture to say that most people who cruise buy into the romance of the sea. They want to be on a ship, not just another hotel. The idea of being on a ship has caught them in someway, and therefore the ship needs to be a ship.”

Posted on April 2, 2006 - by Ralph Grizzle

Wave Sends Mixed Signals

Will the 2006 Wave Season be recorded as a good sales period for cruises or a disappointing one? The answer depends.

“There are big Wave Seasons and there are disappointing Wave Seasons, but the Wave Season of 2006 might just go down as the least clear cut,” reads the industry trade Cruise Week. The Miami Herald took a more decisive stand in an article titled “Cruise Sales Off To Slow Start,” which painted a gloomy picture of cruise sales during the first quarter.Not all segments of the industry suffered from sagging sales, however. If there was a soft spot in this year’s winter Wave Season, it was the Caribbean. Reports from cruise sellers around North America indicated lackluster Caribbean sales, with reports ranging from “flat” to “just so-so” sales.

“Wave consists of two things,” says Ove Nordquist, of South Beach Cruises in Miami Beach, Florida. “It’s people buying summer cruises to Alaska and Europe, plus it’s people buying last-minute Caribbean. And the Caribbean wave just wasn’t there this year.”

Nordquist, whose high-rise condominium is just a few blocks away from Miami Beach’s famed Ocean Drive, adds that Florida hotels, by contrast, are as busy as ever. Indeed, the art deco hotels lining Ocean drive were commanding rates as high as $700 per night when we walked the crowded streets there in mid-March.

During the same time period, Nordqvist said he still had access to significant inventory for Caribbean sailings during March, even with only two weeks of the month left. “I haven’t seen last-minute Caribbean this weak for many years,” he says.

Three factors possibly affected Caribbean sales: The weather. “There was no winter,” Nordqvist says. The price point. “Prices were too high leading into Wave season,” he adds. And hurricanes.

“People don’t know there are no hurricanes in the winter,” he says. Travel agents fear that if Caribbean sales are lagging now, just wait until hurricane season blows in again this coming fall.

Prices may be the biggest factor. The Miami Herald article quoted a cruise seller who said that the average price of a cruise was up 9 percent over last year. Although that number could be disputed, what is clear is that Caribbean prices were holding strong through the first quarter of the year.

And for people looking for deals, high prices were a deterrent. “It’s important to get an extra $100 off air or cruise for those who have the impression that a cruise is expensive,” Nordquist says.

Soft sales were limited to the Caribbean, Nordquist says. Other warm-weather destinations sold well. “Hawaii was just incredible, Panama Canal sold out, and Mexican Riviera was fine,” he says.

And while mass-market Caribbean cruises lagged, demand for higher-priced Caribbean and demand for Alaska and Europe cruises exceeded expectations. Overall, the response to Wave was positive. When New York-based Cruise Lines International Association surveyed agents about how would they rated the 2006 Wave season, 70.3 percent responded that this season’s Wave was “good to excellent.”

Moreover, premium and luxury lines appear to be doing well. During Seatrade’s annual Cruise Shipping Convention in Miami this past March, cruise executives from the big public companies were tight-lipped about Wave season, citing disclosure regulations that prohibit them from discussing forward bookings. Smaller, non-public companies, however, were able to discuss forward booking. And those present at the Seatrade convention reported that call volumes, bookings and yields were up.

Oceania Cruises, for example, noted that nearly all of its 2006 inventory was sold prior to the March meeting in Miami. The company’s President and CEO Frank Del Rio said 2006 will be “a fabulous year for anybody who owns a rowboat” and 2007 will be “even better.”

Crystal Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises reported bookings were up on a capacity-adjusted basis. Regent’s 2007 world cruise was already 80 percent booked in March. Likewise, Seadream Yacht Club reported that 85 percent of its 2006 inventory is sold. Even tiny Cruise West is expecting a record year, with more than $100 million in projected revenues.

Even so, there are soft spots among the small ship and luxury sector. Regent Seven Seas reported in early March that third quarter sales were “a bit slow, particularly in the Baltic,” usually a best seller for the line.

Wave is important, because it is estimated that up to 35 percent of all cruises in a year are booked during January, February and March. In late March, too late for inclusion here, the big public companies will release their earnings’ reports, providing a better picture on how this year’s Wave shaped up. We’ll have a better picture then of how Wave performed, but even then the picture will not be entirely clear.

“What happened during this year’s Wave,” Nordquist says, “depends on what segment you looked at.”

Posted on March 2, 2006 - by Ralph Grizzle

Surprise From Seattle

The surprising news from Seattle earlier this year came not from cruise giant Holland America Line but from tiny Cruise West. The Seattle-based company announced that it not only had acquired Clipper Cruise Line’s 138-passenger Yorktown Clipper and 102-passenger Nantucket Clipper but also expects 2006 to be its best financial year ever.

Projecting $100 million in 2006 revenues, Cruise West President and COO Jeff Krida says careful management allowed the family-owned cruise line to strengthen its balance sheet so that it could purchase the two Clipper vessels outright. Cruise West now has a fleet of 10 ships, each carrying between 70 and 138 passengers, with capacity being a key ingredient to the market position for the small ship operator. “Every time 3,000 people get off a huge ship, at least 200 of them decide they want a different experience — more intimate, more outward looking, where they can be a participant in the destination, not just the audience,” Krida says. “That’s where we come in.”

Because of its dedicated following of small ship enthusiasts, Cruise West can chart new destinations (and purchase ships to sail to those destinations) with little risk initially, Krida says. For example, 45 percent are repeat passengers on Cruise West’s first-ever South Pacific and Japan cruises, which commence in March.

Cruise West began to offer cruises between Seattle and Juneau in 1991 before expanding its reach along the West Coast as far south as Panama and across the South Pacific. The two Clipper ships will sail 2006 itineraries published by Clipper, enhancing Cruise West’s reach on the East Coast, Great Lakes and in the Caribbean. “Our new ‘bigness’ will give us efficiencies, but what we stay very drilled down on is the ‘personal’ in our ‘Up-close, Casual and Personal’ operating philosophy,” Krida says. “That’s what our guests treasure and are willing to pay for.”

Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle

A Princess In Her Prime

Celebrating 40 years of operation, Princess Cruises awaits its new crown.

Ten years ago, Princess Cruises was gearing up to introduce the 1,950-passenger Sun Princess. The new ship, which made its debut in December 1995, trumpeted not only the start of the race to build ever bigger cruise ships (Sun Princess would be the world’s largest cruise ship to date) but also the dawn of a new era: the birth of the balcony stateroom.

While other cruise ships could boast balcony staterooms (after all, Princess pioneered balconies with the introduction of 150 on Royal Princess in 1984), never before had cruise ships seen balconies in such abundance. On Sun Princess, 70 percent of its outside staterooms featured cruising’ newest luxury.

The line’ ground-breaking efforts reinvented balconies as an affordable pleasure for many passengers instead of a luxury for just a few. By the end of 2006, the company’ worldwide fleet will feature more than 8,000 cabins with balconies (more than 54 percent of the fleet’ total outside cabins).

While some might argue otherwise, some key executives say that Princess’ introduction of balcony staterooms was the greatest thing the company ever did. “The greatest advantage we ever had is we started the balcony revolution,” P&O Princess CEO Peter Ratcliffe told Cruise Week last August. “It’s the best thing Princess ever did. And with the Sun, we started this idea of having alternative dining and small spaces. So we don’t need to spend anything on retrofits, because the ships are very consistent. Literally, you can go from ship to ship, and they have the same theme. There’s always that small ship feel.”

A Princess Is Born
Princess Cruises’ modern balconied fleet is a far cry from the cruise line that started life with a single 6,000-ton ferry chartered from the Canadian Pacific Railway. During the winters of 1965 and 1966, Princess “Pat” operated cruises to Mexico’s West Coast. Those proved wildly popular, despite a few hiccups. On the ship’s inaugural cruise, for example, passenger laundry went shoreside in Acapulco, because the ship wasn’t large enough to have its own laundry on board. The laundry left the ship carefully tagged and bagged but was returned in bulk with only one name on it: “Princess Patricia.” The crew had to set up tables in the lobby to display the laundry so that passengers could claim theirs.

Princess Cruises’ Founder Stanley B. McDonald had chartered Princess Patricia and liked the name so much so that he named his fledgling new cruise company Princess Cruises. The run to Mexico proved to be popular, and after two seasons, Princess chartered an Italian newbuild (the builder went bankrupt; Princess chartered from the controlling bank), naming the ship Princess Italia. Business chugged along, and Princess chartered another ship that it named Princess Carla in 1968.

All the while, Princess was establishing a brand identity, at least on the U.S. West Coast. The logo for the company – a character with a sombrero painted on the stack – fitting for the Mexico focus of the cruise line but not for a focus that would soon include the Panama Canal (1967) and Alaska (1968). So in 1968 McDonald commissioned an artist to develop the seawitch that still characterizes the Princess brand today.

Barely a decade old, Princess was attracting attention when in 1974, the company entered into negotiations with London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, the world’s largest and oldest shipping company. Those negotiations culminated in P&O’s acquisition of Princess.

The Love Boat
Much of the company’s success, however, – and indeed the cruise industry’s success – can be attributed to a single event in Princess’ history: the long-running television series, The Love Boat, a moniker that today is still synonymous with the company.

The series began when television producer Douglas S. Cramer, who had created the popular television series Love American Style, decided to transfer his popular comedy vignette series from its studio setting to a cruise ship. The weekly hour-long series was launched on September 24, 1977 and aired every Saturday night until 1986.

At the height of the original Love Boat’s popularity, Princess built Royal Princess (1984), with all-outside cabins and an unprecedented 150 balconies. Two years later, the addition of P&O’s Sea Princess expanded the Princess fleet to five ships. That number would surge when in 1988, Princess acquired Sitmar Cruises and with it, Fair Princess, Sky Princess and Dawn Princess.

In 1989 Star Princess, which was originally under construction for Sitmar, joined the Princess fleet, and in 1991, the line’s Sea Princess was returned to parent company P&O to serve the European cruise market.
The introduction of two new 70,000-ton “superships” — Crown Princess in 1990 and Regal Princess in 1991 — launched yet another era of sea-going innovation, with their distinct dolphin-like exteriors designed by the renowned architect Renzo Piano, of Pompidou Center fame.

This new spate of shipbuilding ushered in a modernization program that saw a number of changes to the fleet, including ships that were retired or reassigned. In 1993, the chartered Golden Princess joined the Princess fleet, replacing the retiring Dawn Princess. Its sister ship, Fair Princess, left the Princess fleet following its 1995 Alaska season and was repositioned to P&O Australia. Golden Princess was retired from the Princess fleet in 1996. In fall 1997, the line’s popular Star Princess was renamed Arcadia and turned over to P&O for British market cruising. In Spring 1999, Island Princess was sold to enter the Asian cruise market, and the original Pacific Princess left the fleet in 2002.

Bigger, Better, New & Improved
In 1995 the line entered a new era of innovative ship design. A new concept in cruising, introduced as Grand Class Cruising and subsequently named Personal Choice Cruising, redefined the idea of a cruise vacation by offering passengers a greater range of dining and entertainment options, introducing the concept of 24-hour dining, and making the luxury of a private balcony an affordable amenity for all.

Beginning with the 77,000-ton Sun Princess, the company began introducing ships featuring multiple dining and entertainment venues and hundreds of balcony staterooms. The shipbuilding program continued with a number of sister ships, including Dawn Princess in 1997, Sea Princess in 1998, and Ocean Princess in 2000.

The most dramatic step in the line’s newbuild program came with the 1998 introduction of the 109,000-ton Grand Princess, which debuted as the world’s largest and most expensive cruise ship. The ship featured three main dining rooms and entertainment lounges, a greatly expanded number of alternative dining venues, and an array of new features, including a wedding chapel, a dramatic nightlclub 15 decks above the ocean and more balconies than on any other cruise ship. This ship proved popular and spawned a new class of ships that incorporated these features — Golden Princess (2001), Star Princess (2002) and Caribbean Princess (2004).

The Princess fleet expansion continued with the introduction of two new ship designs based on these models but on smaller vessels that could transit the Panama Canal: Coral Princess (2003) and Island Princess (2003) were conceived to offer many of the Personal Choice features of Grand Princess. The Grand Princess design also inspired Diamond Princess (2004) and Sapphire Princess (2004).

Princess’ fleet also saw the addition of two smaller vessels, Tahitian Princess and a new Pacific Princess, which were purchased in 2002. Formerly sailing for defunct Renaissance Cruises, these 670-passenger ships diversified the Princess fleet.

During this period, several Princess ships, including Sky Princess, Crown Princess, Sea Princess and Ocean Princess were moved to other companies within the P&O corporation, giving Princess its current fleet of 14 ships. In 2005 another ship, Royal Princess also moved to P&O Cruises and Sea Princess returned to the Princess fleet.

In 2003, Princess’ corporate ownership changed with the merger of parent company P&O Princess Cruises, plc (which had de-merged from the Penninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company in 2000) and cruise giant Carnival Corporation. With this new chapter, Princess joined the ranks of the “World’s Leading Cruise Lines.”

Looking Ahead
Celebrating 40 years of operation this year, the Los Angeles area-based company ranks as one of the largest cruise lines in the industry. Highlights for 2006 include a new ship, Crown Princess; a new embarkation port (Red Hook, Brooklyn), a new Caribbean port of call (Turks and Caicos), and new itineraries.

For the first time, Princess will offer 10-day roundtrips from San Juan, nine-day cruises from New York, and 11-day cruises from San Francisco. 2006 also sees Princess largest deployments ever in Asia and in the Caribbean.

A new generation of ships isn’t on the horizon until at least 2010, but don’t expect anything too dramatic. The company has gone on record saying that Princess will not compete in the battle to boast the biggest ship. Expect an evolution, not a revolution. Why change ? Princess is in her prime.

Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle

Theme and Quirky Cruises

No matter what your obsession, there’ a theme cruise for you. Star Trek fan? Charles Datin, whose father built the models for the original Star Trek series, operates Cruise Trek, billed as “The Premier Trek Vacation Featuring Trek Actors & Guests.” Feel free to dress for his New England and Canada Cruise Trek, beginning June 24, 2006. “We see purple hair, strange-looking ears and full Klingon and Ferengi outfits,” Datin says. Expect 300 to 750 fellow Trekkies to be on board with you.

Want to learn more about computing or digital photography? Neil Bauman of Geek Cruises has operated 28 computer-related cruises over the past five years. Though some of his geek cruises get into the intricacies of scripting and programming, most focus on everyday use of Macintosh computers, combined with digital photography and Adobe Photoshop workshops. “Cruises are a better learning environment than land-based destinations, because at sea you’re undisturbable,” Bauman says. “There’ no cell phone vibrating in your pocket. You’re not plugged in to the real world. You walk away with skills you can put to work when you return home.” Next cruise: September 25, designed for Ipod fans.

Not a Trekkie or an aspiring geek? Check these out: nude cruises, NASCAR cruises (departing December 4 on Carnival Valor), cruises for poker players and cruises for the Red Hat Society (motto: “greeting middle age with verve, humor and elan. Or to “rejuvenate mind, body and spirit,” step aboard Carnival’s Mind/Body Cruise, departing Los Angeles October 23 on Carnival Pride.

Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle

Cruise West To Cruise East

Small ship operator Cruise West launches its first-ever Japan itineraries in 2006. The new “Japan Unveiled” itinerary will run March through October on the company’ all-suite flagship, Spirit of Oceanus. The 13- and 16-night cruises begin at $5,349 per person, double occupancy and promise to take passengers behind the cultural curtain to the “insider’s Japan ““ the coastal ports and feudal castle towns that shaped the island nation.”

Cruise West Chairman and CEO Richard West traveled extensively in Japan to choose the places and activities that would give passengers the best possible experience. “Seeing Japan by small ship relieves the language barriers as well as travel by train and bus to get to some of the significant sites,” West says. “We visit sites during the day, some accessible only by Zodiac, then return to the ship for a steak or a hamburger. The next morning you wake up in a new destination.”

Among the activities and experiences: ancient tea ceremonies, tours of Buddhist temples and Zen gardens, and a bullet train ride from Nigata to Tokyo.

Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle

Ship Shape

What becomes apparent after only a few minutes of talking to the people who design cruise ships is that they are dreamers. After all, a decade ago, who but the dreamers would have imagined that cruise ships today would feature rock-climbing walls, bungee trampolines, human gyroscopes, waterslides, ice-skating rinks and even a planetarium? The dreamers were conjuring up those ideas back in the mid-1990s.And they have many unrealized dreams for cruise ships to come. Joseph Farcus, Carnival Cruise Lines’ chief designer, is still pushing to put a roller coaster on the top deck of a ship. “It would be a very sculptural thing,” he explains. Much like Carnival’s signature waterslides, which spiral down from the upper decks of Carnival ships.

Designteam, a London-based company that contributed to the interior spaces of Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 and other ships, still hopes that some cruise line will see the wisdom of its proposal: a 250-meter ski slope wrapped around the ship’s funnel and sloping to the back of the top deck.

An “inflatable roof” would keep the manmade snow from melting in the Caribbean, says Designteam co-founder Frank Symeou. The roof would be removed when cruising cold-water destinations such as Alaska. “It’s perfectly feasible,” chimes in Symeou’s partner, Eric Mouzourides, “although the weight of the snow was one concern.” Not a safety issue, he explains: The additional weight adds to fuel costs.

If only the cruise line bean counters, those penny-pinching CFOs and accountants who wield power over every cent spent, would loosen the purse strings, the designers could bring even more activities and features previously unthinkable on cruise ships. “Nobody wants to be innovative anymore because of budgetary constraints,” Symeou laments. “Since 9/11 the trend has been to repeat what you’ve already done and done well. The only innovation is to see who can build the biggest ship.”

And that’s just what’s on the horizon for future cruise ship design: bigger ships, with the biggest of them all coming in the spring of 2006.

Bigger, Better, New and Improved, Again
Readers who turned to these pages a decade ago (Hemispheres, October 1995) would have witnessed the beginning of the large-ship battle. At that time, Princess Cruises was gearing up to launch the world’s largest cruise ship, the Sun Princess. But poor Princess would see her tiara tarnished after only a few months, when Carnival Cruise Lines announced that it would launch an even larger ship, the Carnival Destiny.

Princess volleyed by announcing that it would build a bigger ship, the Grand Princess. A line was drawn in the sand, and the battle was just heating up when in 1998, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. blew the battling cruise ships out of the water by announcing it would build a ship more than a third larger than either the Carnival or Princess ships.

Measuring 142,000 gross tons (that’s right, “measuring” — we’ll get to that in a moment), Royal Caribbean’s Voyager series — five ships carrying 3,838 passengers each — submerged the competition and won the large-ship battle. The new series of ships would be nearly double the size of Sun Princess, at 77,499 tons. Gross tonnage is important to designers because it is a measure of interior space, not an indication of actual weight. The term dates back to 1347, when a tun was a large wine cask with a capacity of 252 old wine gallons. Edward III of England levied a tax, known as tunnage, of three shillings on each tun of wine imported by ship into England. Today, a gross ton is equal to 100 cubic feet of enclosed space.

At 150,000 gross tons, Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2, put into service by parent company Carnival Corp. in 2004, eclipsed Voyager series as the largest cruise ship afloat. The press ballyhooed the Queen Mary 2’s sheer size, and probably no other ship has received as much media attention as Queen Mary 2.

“There’s no question that big ships have a great public relations value,” says Carnival’s Farcus. “There are still so many people who have not cruised, and big ships bring new people to cruising.” Partly by the new features that big ships can accommodate, such as rock-climbing walls on Royal Caribbean and waterslides on Carnival, but also because of the media raucous that big ships create.

Where Big Began: Baltic Sea Ferries
Today’s large cruise ships got their start in the Baltic Sea, where ferries began to test the limits of size in the late 1980s. It’s no coincidence that one of the region’s newest and largest ferries, Color Fantasy, resembles Royal Caribbean’s Voyager-class ships. All have promenades, a main street of sorts, down the center of the ship, and all were built from similar blueprints at the same shipyard in Finland, today known as Aker Finnyards. Because it is more ship than ferry, Color Fantasy no longer bills itself as a ferry. The vessel has morphed into what the company calls the “first-ever cruise ship with car decks.”

Birka Paradise, which entered service late last year, made headlines because it was a “full-blooded cruiser without car decks,” an Aker Finnyards press release read. That ship features a glass-covered sun deck with sun lamps to create “tropical warmth in the Baltic” on the ship’s winter sailings between Stockholm and Finland’s Aland islands. So while Baltic Sea ferries have inspired today’s ship design, so has ship design, or at least the concept of cruising, inspired the Baltic Sea ferries.

Royal Caribbean International now has contracts with Aker Finnyards for three 158,000-ton ships to debut in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Those ships, which will be the world’s largest, will carry 4,370 passengers when fully loaded. Plus 1,360 crew. Not to be outdone, Carnival Corp. intends to build a 180,000-ton ship, internally dubbed the Carnival Pinnacle project.

“We’ve seen some serious competition between the larger operators to make the headlines with their new ships — the so-called “˜wow’ factor,” Designteam’s Symeou says. “That’ likely to continue as an effective way of drawing attention to both ship and brand, and attracting those all important first time customers.”

A new line has been drawn in the sand between two ever-battling companies that practically control the cruise industry: Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., which operates 29 ships under two cruise brands, Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity Cruises; and Carnival Corporation, which operates 80 ships under 12 cruise brands: AIDA, Carnival Cruise Lines, Costa Cruises, Cunard Line, Holland America Line, Ocean Village, P&O Cruises UK, P&O Cruises Australia, Princess Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, Swan Hellenic and Windstar Cruises.

Anything Land Can Do, Cruise Can Do Better?
“The fundamental shift in design over the last 20 years has been from vessels designed primarily for travel to vessels primarily designed for entertainment,” says Carl Gustaf Rotkirch, vice president of cruise ship sales for Aker Finnyards. “The cruise industry does a good job of scanning the entertainment industry to stay on top of trends, so much of what cruise lines do emulates what land-based entertainment does.”

The idea, of course, is to make cruise ships destinations in their own right — a ship so full of activities that passengers don’t care where the ship takes them. They may not even want to disembark at ports of call, which would probably suit cruise executives just fine, as the only limitation to how large they can build ships is port capacity. Ever larger ships are challenged with not only how to disperse an immense number of passengers and crew ashore but also how to keep them on board. With a smaller percentage of passengers disembarking, the thinking goes, port capacity becomes less of an issue.

“Are cruise ships getting too big?” asks the summer issue of Seatrade Cruise Review, an industry trade publication. With no fewer than 20 post-Panamax (too large to squeeze through the Panama Canal) ships in service and more than a dozen others under construction, port destinations — particularly in the Caribbean, Europe and the Mediterranean where post-Panamax vessels are limited to cruising — certainly will feel the strain to handle an ever increasing number of passengers. Indeed, U.K analyst Peter Wild says that nearly 300 ports worldwide will need upgrades totaling $3.5 billion to handle larger cruise ships during the next decade.

Slice And Dice Ships
With size being the primary platform for design innovation, even some existing ships are being made larger. In June, Royal Caribbean stretched its 8-year-old Enchantment of the Seas. At Rotterdam’s Keppel Verolme shipyard, workers cut the ship in half and inserted a 73-foot midsection, built at Aker Finnyards and barged to Rotterdam via the North Sea. For a fraction of the cost of building a new ship, the midsection added 151 staterooms, and perhaps more importantly, suspension bridges, a “vitality course with four fitness stops,” an interactive water fountain play area and the first bungee trampolines at sea.

These latter features were partly inspired by Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. “Every new ship we build forces us into revitalization for the older ships,” says Peter Fetten, Royal Caribbean’s vice president of fleet design and newbuilding. “Somewhere between 10 to 14 years, ships need mid-life revitalization. Tastes have changed, and the branding is no longer there.”

Next spring, Celebrity Cruises’ Century, 10 years old, will undergo revitalization to add 314 new verandas to existing staterooms and other features to bring that ship up to date. At a cost of $55 million, roughly the same outlay as for the Enchantment stretch, revitalization is cheaper than building a new ship (Queen Mary 2 was built at a cost of $800 million).

After 25 years, a ship has typically run the course of its life. “At that point, it is usually not cost effective to keep putting money back into the ship,” Fetten says. “So 90 percent of the old ships will end up as razor blades.” Old ships go to India, where they are taken to a scrapyard known as “The Breakers” for the labor-intensive disassembly process.

The Life Aquatic
The current war among new ships is being waged between Royal Caribbean International’s Freedom series, which the company hails as “our largest and most impressive” ships yet, and Carnival Corporation’s Pinnacle series, which, says designer Farcus, “will help expand the entire cruising market by vitiating the number one market resistance in my opinion: claustrophobia, or some form of it.”

Certainly, these super-size ships appear less like ocean-going vessels and more like resorts with design innovations aimed at making people feel less confined. Thus, such far-fetched notions as ski slopes and roller coasters. “Without extreme ideas, it can be very hard to get people motivated to cruise,” says Designteam’s Mouzourides.

From preliminary plans, Freedom of the Seas, on the top deck at least, appears that it will be one giant water park. When it debuts in May 2006, the ship will boast a combined pool area that is 43 percent larger than on the company’s largest existing vessels.

Of the three pool areas, one will feature “interactive” water features such as squirting fountains and a circular pool with a river-like current for drifting. The second pool area features a sports pool for basketball, volleyball, jousting tournaments, water golf and synchronized swimming. The third pool, a jungle-themed Solarium for adults only, will feature two large hot tubs extending 12 feet from the sides of the ship and 112 feet above the sea.

Freedom will also introduce 20 new categories of staterooms designed primarily for families and groups, the largest being the 1,215-square-foot Presidential Suite. With four bedrooms, its sleeps 14 and features an 810-square-foot balcony with a private Jacuzzi.

Carnival’s Pinnacle project, still on the drawing boards, will be large enough to accommodate features that until now designers have only dreamed of —a roller coaster perhaps?

“We have heard time and again over the years about the promise of a new and very different ship,” says Susan Parker, editor of Lloyd’s Cruise International, “but I am still waiting to see something that really does appeal to middle-aged professionals with money to spend.”

With the new features that designers are dreaming up, her wait may soon be ending.

Sidebar: Are Ships Safe?
You may have read about the 60-foot rogue wave that hit the Norwegian Dawn in April. Though the media hype suggested otherwise, the ship sustained minimal damage — a few broken windows. And that wave was a ripple compared to the 95-foot one that in 1995 hit the bow of Queen Elizabeth 2 head on. Although the wave’s crest hit bridge level, none of the 1,200 passengers were injured, and damage was minimal. Cunard’s transatlantic liners have sustained swells of more than 100 feet in the past.

Ship designers and architects shrug off concerns of rogue waves. That’s because shipyards build durable ships. Could a wave damage the structural integrity of a ship — or worse yet, sink it? “No,” says Aker Finnyards’ Carl Gustaf Rotkirch. “It could break windows, but that’s about it.”

Posted on April 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle

Full Sale Ahead

Last year in this space, our article was headlined “Tsunami!” The story focused on Wave Season, the first-quarter period of intensified North America cruise sales and marketing efforts. This year, the word tsunami has a bitter ring, as it conjures memories of the tragedy that struck so many nations bordering the sea in late December.

Its immediate concerns being those affected by the natural disaster, the cruise industry contributed to relief efforts and pitched in where possible. The cruise industry itself was affected by the tsunami, with some ships having to cancel itineraries. Cruise piers and docks in Sri Lanka were damaged so badly that the future of cruise tourism in that country appeared uncertain.

Our use of the word tsunami last year was meant to emphasize the colossal surge in cruise bookings. We would not use the word this year, and in fact, it would not properly characterize the current market trend.

Wave has been strong, but, say some, not quite as strong as the previous year, 2003. “Bookings are strong, way up from 2003, but not quite as strong as 2004,” says Phil Swartz, owner of Cruise Holidays in Tallahassee. “Profit margins are holding strong, however, slightly up from 2004.”

Profits during the Wave period likely are up for many cruise sellers, primarily for two reasons: Cruise fares are about 15 percent to 20 percent higher than they were last year during the same period, with vessels sailing at capacity (even so, Carnival President and CEO Bob Dickinson maintains that even with the increased pricing, cruises are still underpriced).

Also, at least a couple cruise lines put the quash on rebating, which initially meant a level playing field for agents. “The no-rebating policy that Royal Caribbean instituted in August of last year has stabilized the price picture,” says Ove Nordqvist, of South Beach Cruises in Miami Beach. “Not only have we been selling Royal Caribbean and Celebrity with no rebate, but there was also a marked decrease in in the marketplace of commission-based rebating during the fall and into this year.”

Lately, however, large cruise sellers have come up with creative ways to circumvent the cruise line policies against rebating. Travelocity.com, for example, was offering cruise consumers who book at its site gift cards to large U.S.-based Target stores, with up to $600 value, plus a $100 bonus for using Mastercard. So while cruise sellers can no longer rebate commissions for some cruise lines, they can apparently give away color TVS, clothing, groceries or anything else sold by Target and other stores.

Agents were challenged by the fact that coming into Wave quite a lot of inventory appeared to be booked for 2005. But this could have been little more than the cruise lines saber-rattling. Cruise lines responded that there was still space in Europe, and agents appeared to respond accordingly. “Europe has been selling early like never before,” Nordqvist says.

Many cruise lines emphasized — and continue to emphasize — that Europe this year is a better value on ships than on land-based tours. A recent Windstar Cruises press release reads: “With the US dollar versus the euro, Americans traveling on land-based vacations are spending considerably more to visit Europe these days. A better option for exploring Europe is to sail aboard Windstar Cruises . . . ” (clutching Target store gift cards, no doubt).

Sales in the luxury sector have been riding a cresting wave. Crystal Cruises reported that for the week ending January 10, call volume was up 45 percent over 2004 and bookings were up 62 percent over last year. Even world cruises are prospering. At Crystal’s Century City, California headquarters, Bill Smith, senior vice president of sales and marketing, told us that world cruise bookings on Crystal were running 60 percent ahead of last year. Indicating that the world cruise market is attracting newcomers, Smith said 26 people who had never cruised on Crystal before booked a world cruise this year.

As in past years, Wave is extending into early April. “Wave used run from about mid-January through mid-February,” Nordqvist says. “It was absolutely crazy for three to four weeks. We have seen a gradual change to a longer and longer period, with much less of a peak. To some extent I believe this has to do with relatively less inventory in the Caribbean market compared to other markets. The Caribbean market – and Mexican Riviera – created the peak in January, when cruise lines always sold out their remaining winter inventory. Add that to sales for other cruise regions for sailings throughout the year, and we had a Wave.

“The past couple of years the Caribbean market has not had the same effect, because of healthier advance bookings for the winter season,” he adds. “This year the warm weather across the U.S. winter also meant that remaining inventory has been sold over a longer period. There were no snowstorms in January to make the phones go crazy.”

Nordqvist adds that sales for the short cruise market, 3 to 5 days, has been slower than last year. Of course, no one complains about cruisers opting for longer cruises — including world cruises — or about a protracted Wave extending well into the spring. Sales are healthy, the industry appears poised to raise rates and perhaps add inventory. All in all, this year’ wave has been smooth sailing — make that, smooth “selling.”

Posted on November 2, 2004 - by Ralph Grizzle

Take Two, Scene One

Basel, Switzerland-based Viking River Cruises forayed into China this season with one ship. Next season, the Vikings return with two ships and two new programs that combine the best of land and river. Complementing the 186-passenger Viking Century Star’ seven-day sailings between Chongqing and Shanghai, the new 306-passenger Viking Century Sky will offer three- and four-day sailings between Chongqing and Yichang. Cruises include overnights in Beijing hotels with optional add-on stays in other cities, including Llhasa, Tibet. Lead prices are $1,979 per person and include hotel stays as well as all meals and air transportation within China.