I'm going to tell you about one of the largest and longest established river
cruising companies in the world I'm Gary Bembridge of Tips For Travellers.
I'm going to talk about CroisiEurope, probably the biggest secret in river
cruising across Europe. It is a family-run company founded over 42 years ago,
and has been pioneering and sailing the rivers around the world since then.
Although they've been working with tour ompanies and agents in places like the
UK and the USA for over 15 years, they still are not that well known amongst
travelers in those countries. And I think that needs to change. So I'm going to tell
you five things that I think make them unique and different in river cruising.
First of all CroisiEurope offer an enormous choice of cruising options. They
sail in pretty much all of the main rivers that you would expect in Europe,
including the Rhine, the Danube, the Rhone, the Seine and the Douro. But they also
cruise on smaller and less busy ones, including the Loire, the Elbe and
Spain's Garonne and Guadalquivir, in Russia
the Volga, in Asia the Mekong, in South Africa Kariba Lake and the Chobe
River. There's also a wide range of different cruise ship types. They have
the classic river cruising ship, both standard and premium ships, and these
handle up to about 150 passengers. You then have the smaller and unique
paddlewheel ships that sail on the Loire and the Elbe, and they handle up to
about a hundred passengers. They also have barges in France carrying 22 guests.
You have the three-tier ships that go on the Mekong, which have about 60
passengers. The very small Africa Safari ship which holds 16 passengers and then
there's even a 200-passenger boutique cruise ship that cruises along the
Adriatic and the Mediterranean coasts. Another feature is a whole range of
different cruise experiences and themed cruises. So for example some of these
include themed cruises around big events such as the Venice Carnival, they
have family cruises during the summer holidays, there's biking and boat cruises,
there's hiking cruisers, there's also a series of gourmet and wine cruises, the
seasonal Christmas markets and New Year's Eve celebration cruises. And
they're constantly innovating and bringing onboard new ships and new
rivers and new destinations. The second thing that's very
important about CroisiEurope, in my view, is they offer incredible value for money.
So if you've wanted to go river cruising but you're concerned about the price of
river cruising, I strongly recommend you take a look at CroisiEurope. Their fares
are largely all-inclusive, so the fare you pay will include all your
accommodation, you get three meals a day, you'll also get house and non
premium wine and beer and spirits and also soft drinks served at your meal and
also at the bar throughout the day and into the evening.
There's 24-hour tea and coffee making available onboard and Wi-Fi. Gratuities
are completely voluntary and they're not included in the fare and they're not
auto added. They also sell cruise only fares, so that means that you can then by
yourself or working with your agent find the most cost effective or efficient way
of getting to and from the ship. When it comes to excursions: if you book your
cruise in the United States of America then the fares are designed to include all
excursions. If you booked in other countries, such as the UK, excursions are
optional. So they're not built into the fare and it gives you the opportunity of
either buying a package of excursions or choosing to buy individual ones
once you're onboard - or of course just self touring. The other thing they're
doing to try and improve value, particularly for solo travellers, is to
put single cabins onto their boats. So as they upgrade ships and they add new
ships they try to include some solo cabins. Now many of the well-known cruise
lines largely advertise to and attract english-speaking passengers. The
onboard experience and the whole cruising experience is very much
centered around that. But the great thing about CroisiEurope is it is much more
international. So on board you're going to find lots of different people from lots
of different countries. The onboard experience is designed to
cater for a multilingual multicultural passengers, so you'll find onboard
everything's done in multiple languages. You'll find excursions are run based on
the language groupings onboard. Personally I've found that CroisiEurope
river cruising experience is really quite refreshing, because it has a very
international feel to it. I got to meet lots of people from lots of different
countries. Because this is a French owned company, and its roots are in France, the
food reflects this. There is a real passion in all of the food to bring out the
Frenchness and the French heritage and expertise in food. Now onboard breakfast
will be a buffet but both lunch and dinner are three to five
course meals. They focus on the very best of French cuisine mixed in with local
specialities, based on the region that you're sailing through. They have two key
excursion types. They have the "classic excursions" and what's known as the
"discovery excursions". The classic tours are much more traditional river
cruising style tours. They're very focused on arts, history and culture. Many
of them are walking tours and will take you to see the must-see sights and
attractions. For those of you who are perhaps more adventurous or perhaps have been to
some of the places before, are the Discovery Tours. These are designed
to be much more active and let you try some very different things. So for example
they could involve biking tours or they could involve helicopter sightseeing.
As you can see there's a lot to CroisiEurope. Huge amounts of choice,
lots of destinations, different cruise types, lots of experiences, food is
inspired and driven by the roots of the company which is in France, you're going
to have a much more international onboard experience, great choice of
excursions both classic and discovery excursions. If you're looking to go on a
river cruise take a look at CroisiEurope, because in addition to all of those
things you like to find it offers great value for money . I hope you found that
helpful and it's made CroisiEurope much less of a secretive river cruising and a
river cruising company that you really want to travel with.