Regent Seven Seas Team Talks Industry Growth, Longer Stays in Port, & More

This week, Regent Seven Seas Cruises welcomed the newest ship to its fleet, Seven Seas Grandeur. Grandeur was christened in a ceremony on Sunday night in Miami, marking another chapter in the history of Regent.

The ship sports one of the highest space and staff-to-guest ratios in the industry at 55,500 gross tons, and 548 crew to just 746 guests. It also features a 1,600-piece art collection that includes “Journey in Jewels,” the first Fabergé Egg to permanently reside at sea.

As part of the ceremonies this week, NCLH President Harry Sommer and Senior Vice President of Sales Shawn Tubman took some time to talk to the media about the future of the cruise industry and of the Regent brand. Here’s some of what they said.

Is the cruise industry growing too fast?
Grandeur is just one of the new luxury ships that joined the cruise industry in 2023. Others, including including Oceania Vista, Explora I, Seabourn Pursuit, and Silver Nova, debuted earlier in 2023.

With that influx of new ships and new cabins, is there a worry that the industry won’t be able to find the guests to meet that demand? No, said Harry Sommer.

According to Sommer, who relayed information from a conversation he had with Royal Caribbean’s Adam Goldstein, if you took the vacation industry as a whole, cruising makes up about 1.5% of that market. The cruise industry’s task is not to try and take market share from other lines—“I think that attracts people and gets people excited about cruising is a huge win for us,” Sommer said—but rather take market share from the overall vacation industry.

“I have to fight for the 98%, not against the 1.5%,” Sommer said.

The goal is to show luxury travelers that ships like Grandeur not only meet a luxury hotel experience but beat it both with value and experience.

“Those luxury hotel guests are the guests that I think would come onboard this ship,” Sommer said. “I’ve never stayed in a hotel that looked like this ship.”

Tubman added that the Regent team has seen a “Real increase in demand from luxury hotel FIT travelers.” The people who loved FITs, but were turned off by the pricing.

“The advent of the pandemic changed things,” he said. “Prices are so high, a lot of hotel travelers are saying ‘What’s out there?’ We’re getting that interest from there.”

Longer stays in port
Starting in the fall of 2024, and going until the spring and summer of 2025, Regent is going to start testing new itineraries that increase the time in port for its guests.

The luxury cruise line is planning on sailing six test itineraries where instead of 10 days and 8 ports, the ship sails 10 days and stops at 4 ports, with each stop including at least one overnight. Some stops will include three full days in destination.

“We’re going to use the ship as a floating hotel. We think it’s going to be a game-changer in the industry,” Tubman said.

Full details of the additions will be announced in the coming weeks.

The importance of the travel trade
While the Regent team, including NCLH’s Harry Sommer and Regent President Andrea DeMarco, nodded to Regent’s travel partners during Sunday’s christening ceremony, the team went a step further on Monday.

“Everything we do is to help our partners,” Tubman said during Monday’s press conference.

Regent has long been advisor-friendly because of the inclusions in its pricing, which allowed for travel advisor commission on everything a guest paid for. Tubman has long categorized it as “commissions with commas.”

“In real dollars, our commission is definitely tops in the industry,” he said.  

Tubman sees the relationship between the advisor, Regent, and the client as a win all around—consumers get the experience they want on a luxury cruise ship without having to pay for extras onboard, advisors get commissions on all those inclusions, and Regent can fill its ships with repeat cruisers who come to love the experience.

Regent also continues to work towards improving advisor-specific tools, which includes Regent Elevate.

Regent Elevate is the name of the line’s new travel partner program. According to Tubman, it’s the umbrella term for Regent’s trade marketing department, which includes RSSC University, which has been revamped with new degrees and new commission opportunities, along with marketing materials advisors can use to introduce Regent to their clients.