Lasting impressions from my first year of sailing
Looking back at my first year covering the river cruise industry for Travel Weekly, ASTA’s first Global River Cruise Expo in Budapest last April proved pivotal. It was here, where major river cruise lines held open houses on their ships for travel advisors interested in expanding their knowledge of each product, that I was introduced to each river cruise brand’s individual personality.
I subsequently set sail on four river cruises on four different brands in 2022, each offering a window onto not only what they do best but what factors one might consider when choosing a river line or looking for a new kind of river cruise experience.
Emerald Cruises
Emerald Cruises not only does well marketing itself as a premium, active-focused river cruise brand — it truly delivers as one.
My biggest takeaways from sailing with Emerald Cruises, the first river line I ever sailed with, is its ability to tailor your cruise experience to your liking and its focus on providing active excursions that younger travelers can enjoy.
From its Discover More program, where guests can opt to pay for more immersive in-destination excursions, to flexible three-tiered beverage packages and a range of included active excursions — some led by young and hip local guides — Emerald Cruises feels like the brand that might be best for someone new to river cruising who isn’t quite sure what they want from the experience, but is willing to test the waters and try new things to find out.
Avalon Waterways
“Decisions, decisions, decisions” was the conclusion I drew from sailing with Avalon Waterways last spring.
Avalon is a standout when it comes to the efforts the brand puts into making its Active & Discovery program a staple of sailing with them.
The onboard experience is as they say it is: relaxed luxury for an elevated cruise experience. There are subtle notes of interior design changes from ship to ship in its fleet of Suite Ships. And it seems that Avalon spends a lot of time developing off-the-beaten-path land experience for guests to have while in port. Be it evening excursions or interactive Discovery itineraries that help guests connect with the local community and landscape, shore excursions are the centerpiece for this river cruise line.
I think the Avalon Waterways cruise experience might best suit a first-time river cruise traveler who’s looking for immersive, on-the-ground experiences while in port.
AmaWaterways
I sailed with AmaWaterways on an Amsterdam to Basel itinerary last August, and if there’s anything from that experience that has stuck with me, it would be the food.
I can’t remember all of the ingredients or what the dishes were called; what I do know is that months later, I can look at pictures I took of the food I had onboard and remember the feeling I had in that moment. And not just about the taste of the food, which was obviously very good, but the feeling I had from the dining experience and the people I shared it with.
That’s another quality that stood out to me with AmaWaterways: it somehow instantly felt like home, like a neighborhood, a community sharing our travel experiences together and the things we loved about it along the way.
Uniworld
I am an art lover through and through. It never occurred to me that a river cruise line would be so interested in art that it would deeply penetrate the core of the brand.
And then I sailed with Uniworld.
While Uniworld has a great food program as well as nice gyms and spacious rooms that regularly earn five-star reviews from guests, what I most remember from my sailing onboard the newly refurbished La Venezia are two things: the chic, fashion-forward interior design of the ship with its Venetian touches and the fact that the company’s Venetian Lagoon sailings spend a total of four nights docked in Venice, giving art-loving guests like me a chance to explore one of the most famous art destinations in the world.
For art enthusiasts looking to venture out onto the rivers, Uniworld might just be the brand you’re looking for.
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