Yes, it’s busy in the Maritime Leisure sector. While cruise ships continue to grow in size – and generate more first time cruisers – the demand on cruising onboard smaller vessels with access to remote or uninhabited places increases.  This opens a number of opportunities for small operators and newcomers.

After experiencing the glitzy world of 3,000 or 4,000 passenger vessels with the most amazing amenities, a good percentage of holiday makers opt to try out a soft adventure or individually tailored holiday with a more substantial shoreside programme. Presently, I have the pleasure of exploring the market and participate in such holidays in order to evaluate the potentials of alternative cruise programmes. My client, a tour operator, is eager to offer an upscale product in the lower luxury or high middle stream segment with such individuality that customers can choose their programme according to their requirements or wishes. The product should also be affordable for middle range earners and present a good value for money.

Having spent most of my life in tourism with cruise holidays, I am pleasantly surprised of the quality, variety and quantity of really interesting destinations, activities, nature and culture, which have not entered the tourist mainstream yet and most likely will not in the near future.  These days the life of Western Civilisation is dominated by mobile phones, televisions, work pressure and an ever faster lifestyle. This tends to result in a change of holiday demands. While some time ago there was a high demand on activity holidays, it appears that more people, including under 35’s, are looking for places without additional, artificially created stress such as “fun and games at the pool”.  With this I do not mean that today’s holiday customers want to sit on the beach and do nothing – although a day or two of this is always welcome. It means that standing in line for food, entertainment, checking in, checking out, going on excursion, or simply, almost everything you want to do, is a mega-out. So is the unskilled voice of an animator, screaming instructions for a limbo competition just as you want to digest your mojitos.  

Recently I have tried out trips on old sailing vessels or Tall Ships. The experience ranged from “absolutely fantastic” to “extremely disappointing”, depending on the operator. So I am busy sorting out the ones which actually use the sails and not just the rather loud diesel engine, treat tourists as people and not as an annoying fact on their ship and put fresh, regional food on the table.  There are a number of “Maritime Pleasures” I still have to discover before I can write the final report and establish a profile for the products. I am looking forward to dive further into this different world and share my experiences.