Norwegian Cruise Line to Sail Holy Land Cruises in 2019

At a travel agent breakout session onboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s new Bliss, executives talked about how they choose itineraries, in general, and said they are eyeing the Middle East, in particular. The cruise operator is in talks to bring its cruise ships to the Holy Land by late 2019.

“We get asked about the Holy Land all the time, and we’ve just completed two trips to Israel and Cyprus, though there are still some challenges in Egypt,” said Director of Sales Development Glen Rothe. In the works is a cruise that would include three days in Israel and then other stops, sailing in November and December 2019.

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“We’ve done the Middle East before, but then we took a break and went to the Canary Islands instead. We used to stop there on the way to Singapore and it’s an area we want to go to,” Rothe told Travel Market Report after the session. And positive feedback in the region from Oceania and Regent, which sail to Turkey, got NCL to thinking about adding a new itinerary.

Then, the Israeli Minister of Tourism came to visit and organized a fam trip for NCL executives, who came back and said: “It was great. We could do three days in Haifa in the north and Ashdod in the south. So, now we are putting together and curating some itineraries to take to Andy [Stuart, NCL’s president and CEO]. We will probably announce in the next two months, for late November and December 2019.”

The new itinerary is a perfect fit for NCL’s recent focus on the affinity group market, for which it just announced a new program. Religious groups are likely to be a “big and dominant market” for Christmas in the Holy Land.

The process of making this decision is a good example of how NCL chooses destinations, which was the topic of the breakout session. Four factors enter into the decision, he said:

1. Guest satisfaction scores and feedback on websites like Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor.
2. The range of experience they offer, meaning the number of things to do and possible shore excursions.
3. Revenue from shore excursions, which shows how much people enjoy the port.
4. Geographic sourcing, meaning itineraries that appeal to a broad audience.

In short, he said, “we want the maximum demand at the highest price with the highest commission for you.”

The highest-rated port in the Caribbean to which NCL sails now, after its Great Stirrup and Harvest Cays, is Havana; adding Cuba to its Bahama cruises and making then all-inclusive has doubled the yields, he said. New seven and 10-day itineraries will be added to the traditional four-day schedules.