"What Do You Do On This Boat?"*
In December 1992, I first experienced the "6 Star Plus" cruise product. On an "extended vacation", uh, that is between jobs, I booked a cruise on the oddly named 170 passenger cruise ship, Song of Flower. The cover of the brochure on my travel agent's chair had a banner saying, "10% Single Supplement", and the itinerary that caught my eye included round trip air and hotels to Bali and back from Australia. This seemed ideal since I was about to take a, uh, vacation to Australia to, uh, get away. So to speak. Whatever.
After some intelligence gathering by my agent, curiously named Sandy Shores, that yielded that Song of Flower was Seven Seas Cruises first and only cruise ship and that there had been rave reviews in the industry for its first year marketing to Americans, I gave it a try. (Yes, that company is now Regent Seven Seas Cruises that runs Mariner, Voyager, and Navigator, all direct descendants of Song of Flower, and Silverseas can be said to be a very close relative, but that's another story). Flower was arguably the first cruise ship to be a small luxurious vessel that with essentially a 1:1 crew to guest ratio with all inclusive pricing. That is, no tipping, no bar bills, included air and pre and post cruise hotels, and included shore excursions. Meals were cooked to order, served in "open seating" restaurants with extended open hours (that is, no "dinner is served" or assigned times or tables), and most of all a passenger list of older but very accomplished and interesting guests. In my mid-40s, I was 25 to 45 years younger than most of the guests, but I found the others most interesting and willing to engage in conversation. The gourmet food and European upscale style service provided an experience that could be likened to having died and gone to heaven, but with guided tours. The overall atmosphere led to a "summer camp" (in a good way) atmosphere where everyone knew each other quite well--there is lots of time to sit around and chat--and at least for 10 days or so one would have some pretty good and close friends to enjoy the cruise with. Within a day or two of boarding that first Song of Flower cruise, I was hooked on the experience. After a year or so, my new business was apparently stable so I booked another cruise on Song of Flower. Shortly after, I booked yet another short cruise to "get it out of my system", was asked to come back and lecture on the ship, and the rest is, so to speak, history. I haven't worked on these products in some years, but it is a big part of my life. As of last week, I have been a passenger for about 420 days on Silversea, and about 125 on Seven Seas Cruises before that and occasionally more recently; plus about 100 days "working" on Flower in the 1990s. That's about two years of my life spent on-board. And I live in Boulder, Colorado. I know, poor baby.
It is natural that details of the product have changed--dare I say evolved--over the years, and there have been some lapses in the on board operations in the past almost 20 years on these ships. The original guests who were in their 70s and 80s are now gone, at least from cruising, and have been replaced by 55 to 80 year olds primarily. (Note that nothing in this essay should be construed to apply to the mass market ships that appeal to another crowd and provide essentially--in every sense of that word--a completely different experience. The fact that their product is provided on ships is a coincidence only. That's another topic.)
*During those early cruises, I was often asked that by usually older women guests on Song of Flower. I usually answered, "I drink Black Label more than at home."
Write Only Memories have become Unmounted Drives
In 1992, the others on the ship had found Song of Flower pretty much the same way. They heard from their travel agent, read an article on Conde Nast Traveler or other upscale publication, or perhaps some word of mouth was beginning that this a very soft adventure--most of the itineraries included many ports that had never seen a cruise ship before--with very high level food and service. My point is that the customers were older but interested people as well as being interesting people to travel with.
I remember quite vividly coming back from my early cruises somewhat concerned that the wonderful people I met were having, and most importantly enjoying, fantastic experiences--tours of countries not visited by Americans such as both North and South Yemen, "out islands" of Indonesia where the local chief would have a speech for an hour or two to welcome us, for example--and evening conversations often included sharing of travel experiences. But other than sharing to others in the same cohort group, these folks were no longer in a position to use the wonderful travel experiences in their lives, professions, or even to share with grandchildren who were a bit too different in age and experience. It saddened me that while I used almost every travel experience in the most unusual ways and certainly at very least the experiences allowed me to later on produce enrichment lectures that would be successful, my fellow guests were essentially just amusing themselves. Of course, they paid for that and most certainly got what they paid for, but it still saddened me.
On the second segment of the last cruise, the 10 day Ft. Lauderdale to Ft. Lauderdale Caribbean itinerary, it occurred to me most strongly that the guests on this albeit extreme example were no "Write Only Memories," but were essentially "Unmounted Drives". They neither wanted to obtain nor to share any experiences. As mentioned in an early entry to the blog, they had chosen a cruise that required no flying--I overhead more than one of these folks brag that they drove less than 1/2 hour to get to the "boat"--nor provided any new experiences. Many mentioned that they "do a Caribbean cruise" a number of times a year. But they never really left their Country Clubs. As noted earlier, the conversations were trivial about their "home lives". Couples dined alone or with one other already known couple each night, and there were rarely, actually I have no pictures of, any of them smiling. (The above photos provide candid views of fellow guests on this segment in action. In the deck picture, of course, Barbara is an exception, but she was in on the joke.)
So what has this to do with the ship?
How Can a Luxury Cruise Line Keep People Happy?
The answer is to provide a consistent "product" and hope for the guests to rise to the occasion. An analogy is that when prices were substantially reduced or special "casual dress only" cruises were attempted a few years ago, the result was lots of backwards baseball hats in the dinning room and a group that enjoyed the "no bar bill" policy to perhaps an extreme. The resolution of the most unusual confusion among some ship's personnel of my lactose free baked goods with the requests of those who were avoiding gluten appears to been a consequence of, not a confusion of "special orders" in the galley, but rather an attempt by a misguided headquarters (not usually on-board) manager to simplify some operations. This was most certainly and permanently corrected by the Hotel Director and Maitre d' when it was realized that the result was not providing the "Silversea Experience" to me as well as the others, in this small regard. That, the high priority of maintaining the extremely high level of consistent performance and not compromising details in any way, is the secret.
Every cruise segment has a different vibe. Even identical (or in the caseof Silversea, occasional very similar) itineraries in the Caribbean and Alaska will feel different to guests and crew. Of course, only the occasional "mindless" Caribbean Florida to Florida segment will appeal to the country club types, and one would expect that Rio to Namibia South Atlantic crossings, say, will draw a somewhat different group. But Silversea (or the other "S" lines) will most certainly founder if they try to adjust the product for anticipated cohort groups. This is because the act of attempting to match the product to the customers changes the product--kind of a moving target as well as a moving gun--as well as changing the customers for other cruises. Regent apparently is finding this out when they recently began to include most excursions in the cruise fare, to recreate the experience of of the guests of Song of Flower on Asian itineraries in the '90s. But Flower had a maximum of 180 guests in the later years, and two of the three Regent ships are running full with almost 700 guests. Instead of early bonding of the rich, retired folks of 20 years ago on half empty small tour buses in exotic locales, the Regent tours are mostly full buses of grumpy 2010 retired or near retired folks trying to get their "money's worth" by taking every tour and then complaining about the crowds or having to go to "another museum" and asking for the bus to take them immediately "back to the boat" when they get bored.
Everything has consequences, and this level of cruise line has seen lots of unintended consequences. Well experienced staff in the dining rooms were supplemented and then replaced with a more international crew. The result was the need for extensive zero based training. A period of a couple of years of somewhat poorer and confused service (e.g. fresh ground pepper offered on all dishes, including ice cream!) ensued due to the new members very much wanting to perform as trained but having none of their own experiences. My favorite was the line up of assistant waiters at the lunch buffet. As soon as you exited the service line, a busboy would grab your plate--even if it held only a roll, the ship was alongside the pier, and your chosen table was 2 feet away--and take your food across the room. These kids were told that they were "required to carry guests plates". My next favorite example was harder to figure out. That is, why was I being called by the bar waitresses and deck hands, "Sir Mike". Well, I figured it out. These upwardly mobile, intelligent, but mostly Asian crew members were told they needed to address guests as "Sir" or "Madame". But they were not told how. So they just used the words as they had seen in film, apparently mostly about Camalot. Another example is that salt and pepper appeared to be in layers in both multi- and single- holed shakers on every table. This appears to be corrected, at least on Silver Cloud, after it was observed that in some parts of the world where crew were from, the usage of the shaker varied. The very low level employees whose job was to refill the shakers just did what their mothers had taught them at THEIR homes. Now extensive role playing exercises and continued re-training have finally paid off. The new groups work in general much harder and are a lot more matched to modern European and American tastes, at least in my opinion.
Despite the lactose/gluten disaster, The Silver Cloud staff and crew performed at the highest level I've ever experienced on Silversea, Regent, or the old Song of Flower: not necessarily better, but certainly at the best possible. It could be argued, even, that given the full ship--280 guests with all guest suites occupied--this was way above any other cruise. Even with the very demanding and joyless grumps, at least on the last segment. The problem, as suggested by the days of my being served horse poop muffins, is that the Hotel Director, Maitre d', and even the Captain do not know of small problems until they grow into big ones--or a guest is brave (or experienced) enough to walk into the always open door office of the Hotel Director and point out a troublesome issue. The next day's lunch with the HD and HR Manager (primary management/crew liaison and crew trainer) more than fixed the problems by the next morning. As they said, the "Silversea Experience" must be maintained, and the owners and headquarters personnel must be aware of this and endorse it. That's how to get us to reach the next milestone of 500 days and get "A Free Two Week Cruise, Excluding Air".
Stay tuned for the next blog, starting in June.
MB
Thanks Mike - very interesting to learn a bit of history about cruise lines and clientele.
ReplyDeleteGerry