Everything New and Coming Soon Onboard AmaWaterways

As in previous years, AmaWaterways’ COO Jon Burrows joined Travel Market Place on the River for a few days to provide attendees with a sneak peak behind the curtains at how AmaWaterways thinks about its onboard operations. In a presentation that lasted nearly one and a half hours, Burrows laid out the company’s plans for the next few years including new onboard amenities, and enhanced food and beverage offerings. (He also spoke about what’s coming soon to the company’s land excursion program.)

“We’ve been quite successful and if you are successful, you cannot make the mistake of sitting on your laurels. You’ve got to be reinventive. You’ve got to rethink and reposition yourselves in terms of onboard amenities and the services you provide the guests… Everything we’ve done with L Catterton (the investment company that owns the majority of AmaWaterways), is about increasing, enhancing, and bringing up the product to the next level for the guests.”

Rebranding

Burrows started by touching on the AmaWaterways’ rebrand, which includes not only a new logo and color scheme, but also new names for all the spaces onboard AmaWaterways’ ships.

First and foremost, Burrows addressed any lingering concerns advisors might have that the core identity of the brand might also be changing.

“Nothing has changed in the DNA of the company,” he said. “The core people are still there. The sales team is still there. The way that we sell our product is still there, through the agent community. It’s not going to change. We’ve been agent-forward since inception… We couldn’t do it without you.”

As for why the brand change, Burrows said that for a brand that has been an innovator for the past 25 years – first to have bikes, first to offer hiking tours, first to have a wellness program onboard – the color scheme hadn’t changed in 25 years.

“It was time to rethink the brand… something new, something fresh.”

For more about the rebrand, see AmaWaterways Unveils Refreshed Brand Identity.

Not all ships in the fleet have the rebranding yet, Burrows said, explaining that it will take about two years for al the ships to be repainted. (So far this year, some 18 ships have been repainted.) He added that AmaWaterways doesn’t hire a company to do the painting. Each ship’s nautical crew does the work, including the captain, the second captain, the engineers, and the sailors.

“They literally get out there with paint brushes and start painting. The big deal is not the painting. The big deal is the lettering. You have to grind the letters off… its actually quite difficult because behind the grinder are the fuel tanks.”

By the start of the 2027 season, Burrows expects all European ships to be repainted with the new logo and colors.

New Venue Names

As part of the rebranding initiative, all the spaces on the ships are being renamed. No more simple monikers like The Lounge or The Restaurant (with the exception of spaces like the boutique and gym).

The lounge is now called the Lark Lounge. The main restaurant is Journeys.

“The lark is a songbird. It’s a light, airy bird that sings from morning until evening… it’s about giving a character to the main entertainment area of the vessel… we want you to be happy when you’re in here.”

The new name for the restaurant, Journeys, invokes AmaWaterways’ tagline, “Journeys that move you.”

The forward main deck Observation Deck is now called The Terrace, and the sundeck is now called the Sun Deck Club.

Onboard Amenities

Other changes that are being rolled out over the next few months include a host of onboard amenities from new refillable water bottles to plusher slippers and more. Many of these items, including Nespresso machines (there are 2,000 of them on the container ship), higher-thread-count towels and sheets, plus new pillows are on a ship in Rotterdam clearing customs. Burrows hopes everything will be cleared and rolled out to the European fleet by June.

Refillable water stations have already been installed on every ship. Guests will get pretty light blue reusable water bottles and will be encouraged to use them onboard and during shore excursions.

Guests who don’t want to refill their own bottles can use the provided bottles of Amaqua spring water in their staterooms or the tetra water cartons for shore excursions.

Enhanced Dining…

“When you talk about guest enhancements and the guest experience, it’s shore excursions and it’s the food,” Burrows told the gathered travel advisors on Travel Market Place on the River.

Starting with snacks in the Lark Lounge, AmaWaterways will now offer about eight different options throughout the day including items like banana chips, marshmallow cookies, ship-made protein bars, crackers, nuts (when there are no allergies), and more.

Also in the Lark Lounge, AmaWaterways has replaced its tapas menu, which Burrows said was underutilized, with a burger and sandwich menu called Savor at the Lark.  It’s available all-day and features the sandwich of the day from the Journeys restaurant along with a selection of salad, soup, and burgers.

Savor at the Lark is only available on the Rhine, Main, and Danube. In the French rivers, there will be a help-yourself refrigerated glass cabinet due to labor laws that prevent AmaWaterways from having serving staff on call in the lounge all day long. 

Essentially, Burrows said, the changes mean guests will find some type of food in the Lark Lounge all-day long from early-breakfast through late-breakfast offerings to snacks to the Savor at the Lark menu.

Like the Lark Lounge, the Chef’s Table has also been given a second life during daylight hours, with a new Italian menu at lunch featuring a focaccia sandwich of the day and a pasta of the day, along with a burrata salad and tomato soup. (On the AmaMagna, the Italian lunch will be held in Jimmy’s rather than Chef’s Table.)

“There are now three areas of lunch each and every day,” Burrows pointed out.

At night the Chef’s Table has been tweaked to offer a regional menu paired to the river on which the ship is sailing. (In previous years, the menu was the same fleetwide.) There’s a menu for the Rhine and Main, the Upper Danube, the Lower Danube, and one for each river in France.

“That means if you have guests doing a Grand Danube, which is Upper and Lower Danube, they have two Danube experiences. If you have guests doing back-to-back in France – they’re doing the Seine and then going to Bordeaux, that is two different Chef Table experiences.”

Another aspect of the food menus that is different is the selection of breads available at meals.

“We did a bread off,” Burrows explained. “We had German bakers come to the ship during a global summit and we got them to bake, 20 plus different varieties of bread and we tasted every single one and hand-picked the breads that we thought would be best for the guests.”

As a result, there is now a different bread each day.

Another change is that the once-per-cruise La Chaîne des Rôtisseurs French dinner has been replaced with a once-per-cruise Robert Kellerhals Signature dinner.

Kellerhals is the curator of every menu that AmaWaterways has served its guests for 15 years.

“What we said to Robert is, think about every dish you’ve ever cooked for our guests and pick the best ones. What do you perceive are the best, most well-received by the guests?”

Burrows described what Kellerhals chose as a “European guest-favorite Asian-inspired menu.”

Finally, AmaWaterways will soon roll out a new option at dinner, available only in the two smaller dining areas at the front of the restaurant, previously generally used for small group dinners. Available by sign-up only (but complimentary), the menu selection will be limited to the Chef’s Recommendation and will come paired with a wine for each course

… & Beverage Options

Starting immediately, all soft drinks are complimentary to guests 24 hours a day.  (On our sailing we found that this messaging hadn’t quite reached all the bar staff, so let your clients know that if a bartender wants to charge them for a soft drink, they should talk to the cruise manager.)

The biggest beverage change onboard AmaWaterways ships is with the wine program, for which Burrows joked the company “doubled the alcohol budget onboard.”

Under the new wine program, guests will be offered a selection of four regional wines – two red, two white – each day. While the selection changes every day, guests are free to ask for a wine from a previous day if they like that wine better. On a weeklong sailing, that’s 28 wines that guests can choose from.

“The wines are from the region we’re sailing through,” Burrows said, explaining this is in line with AmaWaterways’ farm-to-table philosophy.

“The fresh produce that’s eaten on the ships is from within a 15-kilometer radius of the river. On the Danube, we know the name of the field and the name of the family that produces the products we eat… It’s the same with the wine. Everything comes from within the zone of the river where we’re cruising… It’s our way of promoting local farmers and the local product and giving the guests actually what they want to experience when they come here.”

In addition to the 28 regional wines, guests also can choose from four always-available options, including one red, one white, one rose, and one sparkling.

For guests who don’t drink alcohol, AmaWaterways has expanded its mocktail menu, with one mocktail always available as part of the daily Sip & Sail cocktail hour each evening. There is also a non-alcoholic beer on the menu. Non-alcoholic wines can be brought on if requested prior to sailing. Travel advisors with clients who want non-alcoholic wine should contact their BDM before the sailing to make the request.

Boutique Enhancements

Thanks to AmaWaterways’ ownership (L Catterton) and its relationship with LVMH (of Louis Vuitton fame), the boutique on AmaWaterways’ ships will eventually offer a selection of higher end goods.

“Over the coming years, and this one really will be years, you will see different items for sale in the boutique than we’ve ever had before,” Burrows said.

These items will not completely replace what’s already available, particularly logo and branded items, which guests enjoy purchasing as souvenirs.

Entertainment

AmaWaterways has also made some changes to the entertainment available onboard its ships. While local entertainers will continue to be a part of the lineup, AmaWaterways’ corporate has taken over the rest of the programming.

“Up until now, every single time you’ve been on a ship, the entertainer was hired through our hotel operation company. Now they work for us,” Burrows said, adding this is a one-year trial to test how it goes.

“We have control over the way they perform, the songs they sing, what we would like them to do.”

As part of this effort, AmaWaterways has hired also hired a musical director and guest experience manager to create an entertainment program fleetwide. “We want the guests to have a good time. We want them to listen to music during the daytime. We want them to have an amazing dinner and then we want them to come up and if they wish to feel a bit more festive and dance on the dance floor.”