I'm Gary Bembridge, this is another
of my crusing tips for travellers.
I want to talk about five cruise lines
you've probably never heard of,
but really should consider in your future cruising plans.
Starting with this one,
Celestyal Cruises.
Celestyal Cruises is a really interesting cruise line.
It's a small independently owned cruise line,
it operates out of Greece so it's the one cruise line
that's really home based all year round, out of Athens.
They have two mid-sized ships at the time of recording.
They have the Celestyal Olympia, which has 1,664 guests,
and Celestyal Crystal, which has 1,200 guests.
Celestyal really immerse you into
the whole Greek experience.
The onboard experience has a lot of Greek immersion,
they really focus on the Greek destinations,
they know them incredibly well.
So it's a really Greek immersive destinations.
So it's a great cruise line if you want to go and explore
Greece, the Greek Islands, and that whole area of the world.
It's largely all inclusive, although of course you have
extra costs, things like Wi-Fi and excursions,
that kind of stuff.
They really focus on a great, cultural immersion in Greece.
They have three key itineraries
that they focus on year round.
The real heart of the business is Greece
and particularly the Greek Islands
and they offer really short cruises
of a couple of nights, like three nights,
up to the more classic seven nights.
They go to lots of really interesting islands.
The big main ones that everyone knows,
like Mykonos, Santorini, and they also go to
more out of the way less known ones.
The other two key itineraries that they offer
are the Eastern Mediterranean,
so they go to places like Egypt, Cyprus, Israel and Turkey.
Then they also cruise the Adriatic,
so they go to places like Venice,
they'll go to Croatia, so they'll go to places
like Dubrovnik, they also go to Montenegro
and the beautiful city of Kotor.
So Celestyal Cruise is a really great one to look at
if you're thinking about a European cruise
and you want to try something that really immerses you
into Europe, and Greece in particular.
The second cruise line you may never have heard of
is also a European cruise line
and it's called CroisiEurope.
CroisiEurope is also independently owned,
it's owned by the Schmitter family.
It was created over 44 years ago by Mr. Gerard Schmitter.
It's based in Strasbourg and it is the longest
and most established river cruising cruise line in Europe.
They don't just do river cruising though,
they also do increasingly, they're starting to expand out
into more exotic river cruising and also into
some ocean cruising as well.
CroisiEurope is a value line, so you'll find really good
value for money, fares, and they have an enormous
range of itineraries offering a French experience on board,
so you'll find the food is very French influenced,
and French is spoken on board as well as English.
You'll find lots of French passengers on board,
so if you really want a really European experience,
CroisiEurope is a great one to look at.
They focus on a couple of areas, so as I mentioned,
European river cruising
is their main focus with an enormous fleet.
Pretty much any river in Europe that you can cruise on,
CroisiEurope will cruise on and they sometimes
design very specific ships to cruise
on the harder to cruise rivers.
The sort of rivers they cruise on is the Rhine,
the Danube, the Saone, the Rhone, the Loire,
the Douro, the Po, the Elba, pretty much you name it
and you'll find a CroisiEurope on it.
They also have more exotic river cruising
and they really focus on the Mekong,
so Vietnam and Cambodia, and they also have ships
in Africa so you can go to Botswana,
and onto Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe,
on the Zimbabwe Zambia border,
and you can also go and see the
Victoria Force as part of that.
They also have European barge cruises.
I've been on their barges cruises, it's a great experience
as you travel along in pretty small barge boats,
which sail along the canals through France.
It's a great experience.
As I mentioned they also do have more ocean experiences now
and there are two ships, at the time of recording they have.
They have the La Belle de l'Adriatique, which is 197 guests,
and they mostly cruise around this,
sort of the Adriatic area,
although in the winter period they will go
a little bit further afield.
The most recent ship to join the fleet is
La Belle des Oceans, this they actually bought from
Silver Sea Cruises, it was the Silver Sea Discoverer,
that's joined the fleet.
It's planned to sail in Canada
and the St. Lawrence river area, and that has 128 guests.
CroisiEurope, it's great value for money,
really good European experience,
and really good if you're particularly looking at
river cruising and barging.
The third cruise line you may not have heard of
but I really think you should hear of
is SeaDream Yacht Club.
SeaDream Yacht Club is a really interesting line,
it's a very up market line.
It was Norwegian based, and was created by the man
who founded Seabourn Cruises originally, Atle Brynestad.
It was founded in 2001, they have two ships,
or yachts, as they would call them,
SeaDream One and SeaDream Two.
These small yacht type vessels have a marina at the back
so you can go out, doing lots of water sports,
and it's a very up market, luxurious experience.
The ships only hold 112 guests,
they have just over 90 crew,
so it's almost a one to one ratio.
The SeamDream slogan is it's yachting, not cruising.
So they're really focusing on that
kind of yacht type experience.
It's very all inclusive, very up market,
high attention to detail, it's quite low key,
kind of relaxed, so that also ties in to the whole
yacht club experience.
They basically focus on two regions,
so in the summer period they focus on the Mediterranean,
going to lots of interesting little ports
that you can't do on bigger ships,
and then in the winter season they head down
to the Caribbean, which of course,
is a summer season in the Caribbean.
And again, they'll go to lots of different islands,
many islands that the big ships don't go to.
The next cruise line, which is another cruise line
that I've been on and really think
is remarkable is Paul Gauguin.
Paul Gauguin is now part of the Ponant group,
which is a French luxury cruise line,
so that's maybe another cruise line
you haven't heard of, Ponant is very up market,
and they have lots of expedition cruises
as well as more traditional cruising, very beautiful ships.
Paul Gauguin is a recent acquisition to them.
Paul Gauguin really focuses
on the French Polynesian islands,
so it's based out of Tahiti,
it sails all year round from Tahiti.
It will also go up as far as Fiji.
They, at the time of recording only have one ship,
which is the Paul Gauguin, that has 332 passengers.
Again like SeaDream it has a marina at the back.
It also has quite a low hull,
so it's able to go around all the islands,
so it's specifically designed for the islands,
and it can go into lots of islands and places
that bigger ships that cruise in that area can't do.
Ponant is actually going to add some more ships to the fleet,
which are due to come in over the next couple of years.
These are going to be very high tech ships,
using all of the Ponant technology,
so very environmentally friendly,
and again, designed to really operate in this area.
Paul Gauguin is, it's an up market experience,
they really know the islands incredibly well,
because that's all they do is sail around the islands.
Their classic trip is either seven day trip
or a 10 day trip and as I mentioned,
they sail all year round to all the beautiful islands.
They also have their own private island
which is called Motu Mahana,
and then also in Bora Bora they have
their own private beach as well.
It's a great and beautiful part of the world to go,
and Paul Gauguin are the real experts.
You can cruise on other cruise lines around that area
that'll send their ships down part of the time,
but if you really want an immersion in that area,
Paul Gauguin is the way to go.
The next cruise line you might not have heard of
but definitely should have is also a Norway
based cruise line and it's called Hurtigruten.
Now Hurtigruten has two key parts to it.
One of the parts is sailing up and down
the whole coast of Norway, calling at over 30 ports.
Hurtigruten has actually been doing this route
for well over 125 years.
They currently have 11 ships that sail up and down
all year round, calling at all of these different ports.
It's a classic, amazing trip where they'll call into
all the little nooks and crannies, and down the fjords.
So you can go a winter wonderland type cruise
or in the summer where of course you've got
all the beautiful weather and 24 sunlight, the midnight sun.
In winter particularly a lot of people go on that
to see the Northern Lights.
The classic trip is between Bergen in the south
and Kirkenes in the north which
is way past the artic circle.
Hurtigruten is also a big, big player and a big leader
in expedition cruising.
They're particularly strong in Antarctica and the Arctic,
but they also do things like the Northwest Passage,
they do Alaska, they do Greenland,
and at other parts of the year some of their ships
will travel in more traditional cruises,
like round the UK or the Caribbean.
On Hurtigruten they really pride themselves
about really focusing on expedition, wildlife,
nature, so on, most of the ships, even the Norway ships,
they will have an expedition leader, or an expedition team,
and they will provide lots of talks and immersion
into all aspects of the flora, the fauna,
the wildlife of the destination that you're cruising in.
It's a pretty up market line,
and it's an amazing experience.
That classic Norway experience is really quite remarkable.
They also are very forward thinking like Norway is,
in terms of sustainability and innovation,
so a lot of their ships have lots of modern technology
to try and make the whole cruising experience
much more environmentally sound and friendly.
Those are five lines you may not have heard of
but I really think you should think about,
understand, and consider.
I have loads more videos packed full of tips and advice
about cruising and cruise lines,
so why don't you watch another of them right now?