My Mom is One Smart Lady
My Mom called this weekend to ask me about a promotional mailer she received from the Best Cruises Travel Agency, which she used to book a cruise ship vacation to Alaska a couple of years ago.
“They’re offering something called a Caribbean Yachting Voyage,” Mom told me. “So I thought of you. But then I was looking at the details, and it says there are 55 couples onboard the boat. How can it be a yacht if it takes so many people?”
As any regular reader of CharterWave knows, virtually all of the world’s proper charter yachts take no more than 12 people at a time. That’s six couples, max, far less than 55.
So I asked my Mom if there was a name of a ship on her flyer. As it turns out, this particular “yachting” voyage was with Sea Dream–a small-ship cruise company that has been trying in recent years to market itself as offering the private-charter experience without any actual charter yachts in its fleet.
They’ve been somewhat successful, too, going so far as to buy booths and hold seminars at industry-only charter yacht shows where they talk charter brokers into directing their clients onto these small ships in exchange for nice commissions. Not all charter brokers have gone for the sales pitch, but more than a few have.
I personally sat through the company’s sales pitch about two years ago, just to hear with my own ears what was being offered. And every time the saleswoman said, “We offer a yachting experience,” I asked how that was possible onboard a cruise ship.
She continually answered that the quality of service was the same as it is onboard yachts. I asked whether the crew came from yachts, and she said no, that they come primarily from larger cruise ships. I asked whether the boats were as small and personalized as yachts, and she said no. I asked whether the itineraries were as flexible as they are onboard yachts, and she said no.
So I asked how on earth she could make the claim that her small cruise ships offered a yachting-level experience, and she smiled while changing the conversation and going back to trying to sell the charter brokers into her commission-based program.
I’m sure that not everyone who received the same flyer as my Mom knew enough about yacht charter to realize that a ship holding more than 100 passengers is no yachting experience at all. I’m also sure that not everyone who received the same flyer knows that most travel agents wouldn’t know a proper private yacht if it sailed up their front lawn and crashed through their living room window.
What I do know is that consumer education is the only thing that will keep these kinds of marketing ploys at bay, and that we here on CharterWave are going to continue to expose cruise ships–small or large–as exactly what they are.
Cruise ships are not, in any way, the “yachting voyages” that this Sea Dream company pretends to be.
We may never win this mammoth marketing battle, but at the very least, maybe someday all of our readers will be as smart as my Mom.
October 9th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Hi Kim–
With no disrespect for you or your Mom (you’re both smart), I have to say that your article about Seadream is, when you step back, a bit nit-picky, and does not really serve the purpose of promoting the Charter Industry. It actually makes the charter industry as a whole come off sounding unnecessarily exclusive– and not in a good way.
Sure, Seadream is lot bigger than the (arbitrary) 12 passenger max on most charter yachts. If the SOLAS restriction were changed you could be there would be MANY more charter yachts with MANY more guest berths. As far a the level of service– it is WAY up there with yacht crews. Many crew move between high end cruise lines, shoreside positions , and yachts. Mainstream cruise lines are a very different story. Yes, there is more structure that comes with making more people happy at once— but MUCH less than larger mainstream cruises. A product like Seadream fills a niche– for people who like the “yachting atmosphere”, but don’t necessarily have the time to find five other couples to travel with at the same time– and since yachts don’t generally book “by the cabin’…. so be it. Booking by the cabin and meeting other like-minded people while traveling is a positive attribute, and it is a shame that it is so hard to manage on most Charter Yachts.
And though though the itinerary was preplanned (yacht trips are too- to some extent), when my wife and I wanted to spend the evening at Foxy’s, the captain gladly cruised around the other side of the Jost for the evening. And when we had a guest who wanted lunch onboard — we cruised by Necker Island to pick him up.
Seadream also fills that space in between high-end cruising like Seabourn, and Private Yachts. And, it was the introduction for us to the world of charter yacht vacations. Nothing wrong with that, and ultimately benefited the charter yacht business, as we are now veteran charterers as well–which is wonderful! But sometimes Seadream is just what we want for a vacation too. …and it’s a lot closer to yachting than cruising.
I sometimes wonder why the charter industry seems so “set in it’s ways”….
I enjoy Charterwave, and agree with you most of the time, I just thing you might not have experienced the Seadream product, or looked at the benefits…
I don’t work for Seadream by the way, just repeat guest!
best,
Rick