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personally speaking
by John Wardall
Many shipping lines
missed the boat
“It
is difficult to appreciate now the lack of vision
and quite awful judgement
of many passenger shipping
lines when the airlines, with
their new jets, mainly the
Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8, started to take over the
major traffic routes between
the UK and Europe and North
America, Australia and South
Africa.
I was in hot water with the
shipping lines after an interview with the then Managing
Director of the late lamented
Pan Am in the UK and quoting him on his predictions
of their demise under the
onslaught of cheap, frequent
and fast air travel.
But the self denial didn’t last
long and, one by one, historic,
household names started to
give up and close down.
Those iconic names, Union
Castle among them, failed to
see the way cruising would
transform the holiday experience and grow its global
market at the unprecedented
rate we see today, generating
such huge volumes, new ship
builds and creating enormous
revenues for destinations
around the world.
Many thousands of jobs and
new businesses have resulted
and, incidentally, one of the
greatest and most rewarding
line-up of products for travel
agents to sell.
The myopic companies
which gave up, sold their
ships at fire sale prices and
then watched as the more
far-sighted turned them into
cash machines illustrate the
dangers of failing to adapt to
changing times.
The Transvaal Castle, for
example, was sold by Union
Castle to Safmarine and
became the S.A. Vaal, until
the Cape Town – Southampton route was abandoned.
Completely misjudging what
was going on in the market,
Safmarine then sold it to
Carnival Cruises and, as the
renamed Festivale, became
hugely popular in the North
American market and tremendously influential in growing
the profile and popularity of
cruising.
I was onboard for a Caribbean cruise shortly before
moving to South Africa and
it was packed with families
during the school break, who
had never considered a cruise
before. Introducing their
children to a cruise holiday no
doubt helped build the market
for the future.
And a little drive-on, driveoff car ferry called the Sunward, which operated from
Southampton to Vigo, Lisbon
and Gibraltar, was moved to
Miami and converted to operate short Bahamas and Caribbean cruises for Norwegian
Cruise Lines, a joint venture
between the original owner
Knut Kloster and Ted Arison,
who later formed Carnival
Cruises and, through that, became one of the richest people
in the world.
That venture was also
instrumental in launching
the development of the Port
of Miami into the enormous
cruise hub it is today. By
chance, I was also on the
Sunward’s maiden voyage,
disembarked in Vigo to have a
brief tour of the Galicia region
of Spain, home of the dictator
Francisco Franco and, ironically, the Basque separatists,
and then joined the ship again
on its way back to Southampton.
Chance struck again recent-
ly, when I had lunch on Fred.
Olsen’s Boudicca in Cape
Town. It was originally the
Royal Viking Sky and I had
been on the line’s first ship’s
maiden voyage from Bergen
to the Shetland Islands and
back into Oslo. It was the Royal Viking Star, which is now
Fred Olsen’s Black Watch.
There seems to be no end
to the growth of cruising, evidenced by the order book for
new ships, giving the travel
trade ample opportunity for
financial reward in a sector
which records a high level of
customer satisfaction and
repeat business.
A big problem for local highstreet and independent agents
in selling cruises is competition from major online agents
overseas, who produce serious
volumes for the cruise lines.
I regularly get emails from
a US retailer offering cruises
with up to 75 percent discounts on published cruise
fares for ocean and river
cruises.
Their volumes give them
access to often hugely discounted fares and special
offers from the cruise lines
themselves which are not
available to smaller retailers.
And due to the significantly
different air travel market in
the US and Europe, air fares
are often included from many
cities to ports of departure,
which can enable additional
savings when travelling from
continued on page 30
H Union Castle bowed out but its Transvaal Castle boosted
the popularity of cruising in North America.
Photo: Period Paper
Travel Industry Review | April/May 2018 29