A Tale Of Two Ships

8/24/200910:30:20 AM Link 0 comments | Add comment

Cruises

If your last cruise was 15 or 20 years ago, you wouldn’t recognize today’s ships. As passenger cruise vessels have gotten bigger, they’ve also gotten flashier and more luxurious with features unimagined a decade or so ago. The pressure is on cruise executives to continually raise the bar, outshining their competitors and even their own older tonnage.

But how these ships evolve depends on a line’s clientele and what the cruise company is trying to accomplish. Let’s consider two ships due out in December -- Royal Caribbean International’s 220,000-ton Oasis of the Seas and Silversea Cruises’ 36,000-ton Silver Spirit. Talk about polar opposites.

As befitting the world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Oasis is sure to be a showstopper. Its sheer size alone gives the line freedom to add unheard of features, including a 35-person bar that is legally certified as an elevator. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Chairman Richard Fain recently wrote in his blog about the Rising Tide Bar, which was conceived of as a way to get passengers between what are sure to be two popular areas -- the Royal Promenade and Central Park.

Fain wrote that he nixed original plans for glass elevators-- nothing new there. The ship’s architects came back with a plan for something like an enormous seesaw -- when one end was on the Royal Promenade, the other end would be at Central Park. “We all liked the idea in concept and marveled at the engineering work they had done to make it feasible,” Fain said. “Unfortunately, it required so much space and it carried so few people that we concluded it just wasn’t practical.”

So what was the next idea? The answer was the 35-person bar, so guests can sip a cocktail while moving between three decks. Fain reports that all the engineering and safety systems are in place, so Rising Tide is being billed as the first moving bar at sea. “We all knew immediately that this was a winner,” Fain said. “Now that we’re seeing it in place, we are even more excited about it.”

Of course, the Rising Tide Bar is just one small piece of the Oasis puzzle. Countless other features are just as jaw-dropping – including seven distinct “neighborhoods,” the open-air Central Park with real greenery and even a zipline over the Boardwalk. Royal Caribbean even experimented with a lighter-than-air balloon tethered to the ship to see if it could be used for blimp-like rides for passengers. Alas, the balloon escaped during a test and the idea was scrapped.

But Royal Caribbean is creatively trying to top its own pioneering innovations now considered almost mainstream. Consider how groundbreaking the rock-climbing wall, surf-riding feature and ice rink were when first introduced. The line consistently commands premium pricing for its newest and flashiest ships, which also attract many first-timer cruisers and families.

I can’t imagine ever seeing those kinds of features on the Silversea’s Silver Spirit. The luxury ship will offer an array of features decidedly different from those on Oasis of the Seas. Silversea attracts a different type of clientele -- a luxury customer more interested in fine dining, wine, relaxation and a feeling of spaciousness. These cruisers don’t want to stand in line or to be jostled in a crowd of thousands disembarking for a day of sightseeing. They also want to feel like they are on a cruise ship with the feel of a boutique hotel instead of a massive resort at sea.

What Silversea has chosen to do is offer a variety of restaurants -- no less than eight dining options, ranging from places to get small bites to a full gourmet blowout. “What we think is really revolutionary is the number of dining venues,” says Brad Ball, director of media relations for Silversea. “It’s really unheard of for a ship with 540 passengers to have this many dining venues, plus room service.”

Those restaurants include The Restaurant, the main dining room with a contemporary international cuisine with exclusive menus by Relais & Châteaux; La Terrazza, an indoor/outdoor restaurant with casual buffet-style dining for breakfast and lunch and Italian cuisine served a la carte for dinner; Le Champagne, for six-course meals and wine pairings; and Seishin, a Japanese dining room serving Kobe beef, sushi and seafood specialties. Le Champagne and Seishin require a cover charge, as yet unset, as well as reservations. Another new feature is Stars Supper Club, which offers cocktails, tapas, light dinners and dancing.

La Terrazza will feature meals adhering to the “slow food” movement, which means fresh, local ingredients prepared with natural methods that enhance the flavor and nutrition. “Slow food is the opposite of fast food,” Ball says. It’s also a movement gaining momentum, and something Silversea knew its guests would appreciate.

Silver Spirit also will feature more outdoor deck space. “People love open deck space, they love to be outside,” Ball says. “Why be on a ship if you can’t be outside? This ship has a tremendous amount of open deck space for a ship its size. Not to knock other ships, but sometimes these days you lose the connection with the outside with the courtyards and atriums that have no connection with the water or the places you’re visiting.”

Silversea also feels that destinations should be a focus of a cruise -- not the ship itself. “We want clients to get off the ship and enjoy the ports of call, then come back to their floating five-star hotel with great service,” Ball says. “We feel we have all the innovations and bells and whistles clients want, but it will also be a Silversea vessel with the level of service that we’re known for. Hardware is important, but it’s not the only component. We feel this ship will take us 10, 20, 30 years to the future.”

So there you have it: These two ships couldn’t be more different, but they also offer innovations that appeal to their own specific clientele. It’s up to you to qualify your clients and decide which vessel fits best for them. For more information, visit www.royalcaribbean.com, www.oasisoftheseas.com, and www.silversea.com.

Theresa Norton Masek is editor-in-chief of Vacation Agent magazine and a veteran cruise journalist.