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| All Hands on Deck | ||
| Why small-ship cruise meetings and incentives make good business sense. | ||
| BY ALLAN LYNCH | ||
| While cruise companies continue to build mega-ships packed with amenities—bowling alleys, climbing walls, boxing rings, conference centers—small ships remain a resolutely discreet and luxurious niche. Their lower passenger numbers, flexibility in scheduling, and ability to reach destinations too small for larger cruise ships make them an ideal venue for the high-end corporate incentive. The bonus for smaller groups is that, when you buy out the ship, you don’t get lost in the crowd. Everyone seems to be doing small-ship charters. In August 2006, Queen Elizabeth II marked her 80th birthday by chartering the 30-stateroom Hebridean Princess for a private cruise around Scotland. In August 2005, Massachusetts-based Mercury Computer Systems Inc. treated 78 people to the luxury of cruising the Mediterranean on a SeaDream ocean yacht.
Richard Gaeta, president of Premier Incentives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, organized a more mainstream cruise incentive for a client. Gaeta says, “This client selects really eclectic destinations. Over the past 10 years, they have gone everywhere from Antarctica to the Yangtze River to Costa Rica to wine festivals in Switzerland. They’ve done none of the London-Paris-Rome types of program, and they are not a candidate for a larger ship. They wanted something intimate and personal, and an experience that brought them to unique ports.” Premier’s Director of Planning, Gail Brunstad, adds that participant surveys from previous incentives indicated this group wanted numerous experiences “without having to pack up and relocate. And on a land program this is unavoidable. They had a banner year so they really wanted to treat their team members to an ultimate experience.” The beauty of a cruise with SeaDream Yacht Club, according to Gaeta, was how special the guests felt. “We’ve done larger ship programs and had larger guest counts—250 on a ship that held 2,500 people. The negative is you didn’t feel special. As much as we tried to make them feel special, they were still on a large ship. But SeaDream brought customization to the party. How many times do you go on a cruise and have people remember your name, remember your drink, remember everything about you? SeaDream did.” Gaeta’s client is adamant about doing the unexpected. “The president wanted these highly compensated, well-traveled people to go to ports of call that most people wouldn’t experience.” The weeklong incentive cruise took participants to ports along the coast of Italy to Corsica, Sardinia, and Capri. The trip didn’t offer a lot of shore excursions, but it did provide what Brunstad describes as a “mind-boggling” private tour of Pompeii, and gave every participant “an allowance that let guests to do things on their own.” There are three main factors to consider when developing a cruise incentive or meeting: price, flexibility, and service. Big ship, small ship, mega-ship: all sectors of the cruise industry are able to offer all-inclusive pricing, which is a phenomenal help with budgeting. And while most cruise ships pride themselves on service, the small cruise sector, by the boutique nature of its size, pulls ahead in terms of customization and flexibility, which can range from developing a theme cruise to scheduling specialized shore excursions. For a truly tailored experience, smaller cruise lines like SeaDream will customize an itinerary for a client. Lucille DePurro, SeaDream Yacht Club’s business development director, says, “If you’re chartering well in advance we can build our itinerary around you. I had a client who wanted to go to Istanbul, and we customized an itinerary around their needs.”
“You can also customize the on-board product. You may want to take in certain shows the ship does and not others. If you want to bring on your own entertainment, you can. If you want to change meal times, you can.” Part of that customization can be to use the ship as a floating hotel, dropping ports so the ship can linger in others overnight. This offers participants an opportunity to explore the ports and have an evening on their own in town. According to Wallack, “A mistake people make is putting participants on a ship in one destination, taking them off at the end of the cruise, and not letting them see either place. Take Nice to Monte Carlo, for example: let them have a day in Nice, let them have a day in Monte Carlo, and then fill in the middle with other ports, but don’t rob them of the two really cool cities that they’ve arrived and departed from. Or, overnight them in a hotel coming in and going out. You could always use the ship as a hotel by buying it for two extra nights.” You can expect to pay for additional nights in port, but the ROI should be judged like any other business investment—you get what you give. While the small cruise ship inventory isn’t being added to with the same speed that mega cruise ships are being christened, clients are not without choice. Wallack says, “It all depends on the level of product a client is looking for. Sometimes the CEOs want a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons at sea. Then you need to look at the Yachts of Seaborn or a SeaDream. But if you are willing to sacrifice the luxury component and go for something a little more conservative or moderate, while maintaining the exclusivity, then there is nothing wrong with a Star Clipper or a Windstar ship, or even a river ship. We do a lot with river ships in Europe, which range between 50 and 200 passengers. There is also Sea Cloud II, which is terrific. It was built new, holds 90 passengers, and is gorgeous. It’s very European, very beautiful, not a ridiculous amount of money to charter, and they do some unique itineraries in Europe and the Caribbean. But you have to remember that many of these small ships don’t have a lot of public space—they can be great for an incentive, but when it comes to meeting on-board, you’re challenged because there aren’t theaters per se like on a larger ship.” Wallack also advises if you must have a meeting on a smaller ship, do it on a sea day, not when the ship is in port. If there is any reluctance on the part of corporate management to a cruise charter, it often boils down to fears that it’s harder find privacy on a small ship. Gaeta chuckles that his clients have yet to be cornered on deck by their staff, or peppered with embarrassing business questions. “It’s never happened.” Gaeta adds, “We’re a smaller, boutique incentive house. Obviously, I’m seeing the trend to larger ships and I’m resisting the heck out of it as much as I can because, from a pure incentive standpoint, while the larger ships afford enormous choices and opportunities, we have found that our clients want to intermingle with their staff or their distributors or whoever, because isn’t that the whole purpose of this thing? So for us, smaller is better, smaller is more. As long as you get a high quality company that knows how to deliver service you’ll be satisfied.”
Groups looking for bone-chilling adventure can take to such exotic destinations as the Arctic Circle, Greenland, and Antarctica with the converted icebreaker Polar Star, operated by Polar Star Expeditions in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (www.polarstarexpeditions.com). Lifestyles of the rich and famous are represented by companies like SeaDream Yacht Club (www.seadreamcharter.com), The Yachts of Seabourn (www.seabourn.com), and Aristotle Onassis’ former yacht, renamed the Christina O., (profiled in the December 2005 issue of Executive Traveler). To experience the royal treatment, check out the two ships of Hebridean Island Cruises (www.hebridean.co.uk). They don’t just do Scotland. Riverboats on the Rhine, Danube, Nile, and Amazon provide luxury, exclusivity, and intimate introductions to destinations larger ships often bypass (check with your cruise planner or travel agent). Photo Captions: |
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In February 2006, Carol Krugman, formerly an independent meeting and incentive organizer now with the George P. Johnson Company, took a group of radiologists up Amazonian tributaries on a 72-cabin riverboat, the Iberostar Grand Amazon. Krugman says, “We actually had a medical meeting on board—as with most cruise ships we used the theater, and all the AV is built in. [The cruise] was perfect for this group because they had been everywhere and done everything, and the Amazon is one destination many people are interested in but are afraid to go to, and not quite sure how to go about it. This is a perfect way to see it. Most of the major cruise lines have an Amazon itinerary but the ships are usually too big to do anything other than sail the river from Manaus, the capital of the Amazona province. This ship is small enough to offer a seven-day itinerary that is broken into two segments that take you up two tributaries of the Amazon, and because the ship is smaller, you can get into areas the larger cruise ships can’t and trek through the rain forest.” Describing the accommodations as a solid four-stars, Krugman says, “Remember, you’re in the Amazon. [Prior to the Grand Amazon] the choices were either take a five-star cruise and not see anything or get on something equivalent to the African Queen. This ship is fully air conditioned, very comfortable, the food is good, and the staff is terrific.” 
Shari Wallack, whose company Buy-The-Sea in Plantation, Florida, arranges incentive cruises, says, “If you charter a ship with one of these small lines far enough in advance, before their brochure has been printed [at least 18 months out], you have a lot of flexibility in terms of itinerary and the number of nights you’re chartering. You can do a five-night charter, whereas most lines usually don’t schedule five-night cruises. But because a lot of incentive programs are five nights, they’ll do it.”
