Everything New and Coming Soon to AmaWaterways’ Shoreside Experience

A highlight of each year’s Travel Market Place on the River hybrid conference/FAM trip is the moment AmaWaterways’ chief operating officer Jon Burrows takes the stage to talk about what’s new with the brand. In this year’s one hour and a half presentation, Burrows, in his usual irreverent style that keeps travel advisors laughing, went into great detail discussing everything new and coming soon both onboard AmaWaterways’ ships and to the landside experience.

Shoreside, AmaWaterways is exploring ways to maintain better control over the in-destination tour guide experience, expanding its off-season itinerary programing, adding more – and further afield – pre-/post- extensions, and taking its onboard fitness program shoreside.  

Tour Guide Control & Journey Boards

One of the biggest issues with any type of tour product is that you can have good guides or bad guides, with most guides creating their own version of any given tour. Said another way, there’s little consistency from tour to tour.

“Local guides are key to what we do,” Burrows told the travel advisors gathered in Lark Lounge for his presentation. “You can have good guides and you can have bad guides and sometimes it’s hard to control that.”

His task, he said, was to figure out how to both attract the best guides to work with AmaWaterways and then determine how to add consistency to the experience, so that guests have “a continual story from day one to day eight.”

As an example of what he doesn’t want to happen, Burrows said that typically a tour guide in almost any city on the Danube River will discuss the Hapsburgs ad nauseum. Instead, he emphasized, guides should only bring up the Hapsburgs when it makes sense.

To start the process of bringing consistency to the guide tour experience, AmaWaterways set up meetings with as many of its local guides, tour partners, DMCs, Cruise Managers, and operations staff as it could gather onto one ship to create Journey Boards (think storyboards in filmmaking.)

“We did six days, mapping out what we call Journey Boards. It’s literally a canvas of pictures that says: one day one, talk about this. On day two, talk about this and on day three, talk about this. More importantly, don’t talk about this and don’t talk about that. You’re not allowed to talk about the Hapsburgs until it’s relevant.”

Guides also are told what guests experienced the day before and what they will experience the next day.

“It’s important that the guides understand what you did yesterday, where you’re coming from, what you’re doing tomorrow, and where you’re going to go.”

For each port call, guides are given a postcard that literally lays out eight images that define the “story” AmaWaterways wants them to tell. On the back of the postcard is a list of things not to talk about.

The Journey Boards extend to on-ship day-to-day transitions, as well.

“During the daily briefing, the cruise manager can give guests the concept of what’s going to happen tomorrow using a transitional story,” Burrows said.

The Journey Boards program is just getting off the ground and so far is very much a work in progress. Though Burrows said he and the AmaWaterways team met with some 1,000 local guides between January and mid-March – with the most recent meeting of specifically Dutch guides occurring just four days before TMP on the River departed on AmaCerto – we say nary a guide using a Journey Board.

Moving forward, Burrows indicated AmaWaterways plans to set up a training program, which guides must pass in order to work for the company.

“It seems very trivial but it’s a huge step forward, because we want to create a picture of Europe for the guests to have this homogenous experience from day one to day eight.”

Expanding the Sailing Season

The core of every European river cruise company’s sailing season is April to October, plus Christmas Market cruises in late November and through December. But in an increasingly crowded marketplace, river cruise operators are no longer content to stick to these core months.

“Like all river cruise companies, we’re always looking for opportunities to increase the number of sailings that we can operate,” Burrows said.

To extend AmaWaterways’ sailing season, the company recently announced the introduction of City Escapes, which kick off this November and extend into February 2027.

Burrows talked in great detail about the new initiative, which addresses the problems that off-season river cruise itineraries on the Rhine, Danube, and Seine rivers can face – summer towns and attractions shut down, too cold for walking tours, etc.

“What we’ve done is looked at every single port on the Seine River [and the Danube and Rhine Rivers], and we’re only going to the major cities… with more time in every single destination,” he said.

Shoreside experiences – which Burrows lamented are no longer referred to as shore excursions – have also been tweaked to reflect the time of year.

“There’s less walking tours. It’s November. It’s February. We want to do things inside.”

That means more museum visits, including lesser visited museums or visits that combine hands-on learning after the tour. In Rouen, as an example, guests can visits a fine arts museum for a tour and then do a painting lesson.

After hours and behind-the-scenes visits also play a role in the itineraries. In Paris, guests can visit the La Samaritaine (an exclusive high-end shopping mall) afterhours because it’s owned by LVMH (an investor in AmaWaterways’ parent company).

All City Escapes will also include an off-board food experience – either lunch or dinner. In Rouen, for instance, guests will dine at France’s oldest restaurant, which dates back to the 1400s. In Vienna, guests will enjoy an include meal and concert at the House of Strauss.

City Escapes will also feature more daytime scenic cruising where it makes sense. For instance, the Danube City Escape itinerary will feature daylight scenic cruising in all four UNESCO World Heritage areas of the river, which includes sailing out of Budapest on the Danube Bend, sailing through the Wachau Valley, sailing through the Strudengau (almost always done at night during the regular season), and cruising through the Horseshoe Bend east of Passau.

New Pre- and Post-Cruise Extensions

Related to the City Escapes are a series of new pre- and post-cruise land extensions that are being trialed this upcoming shoulder season including to London, Basel, and Rome.

For the London post-trip, which is available on all Seine, Danube, and Rhine River City Escapes, guests travel by Eurostar to London for a three-night extension, with accommodations at the Cadogan Hotel. One day is spent in London visiting sites like the Tower of London and the London Eye, taking in a West End Show, enjoying a Jack the Ripper tour, and having fish and chips. The second day is spent visiting Westminster. 

In Basel, Switzerland, which is available pre- and post-Rhine City Escape cruises, guests will visit three museums including the Fine Arts Museum, Tinguely Museum, and the Pharmaceutical Museum, which is housed inside the University of Basel.

The Rome extension requires a flight and includes time in both the Vatican and Imperial Rome visiting sites like the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s in the Vatican and the Forum and Colosseum in Imperial Rome, as well as lesser-known sites including the House of Livia and Domus Aurea (Nero’s home).

Other extensions AmaWaterways is putting together include two-nights in Leon and a three-night Porto to Santiago de Compostela. Burrows added that the plan is to build an extension around any city that AmaWaterways has a turnaround.

At the moment, there isn’t a choice of hotels for these land extensions, but Burrows said the goal is to give guests starting in 2027 a choice of two hotels: an iconic five-star property and a “super hard to get into” boutique hotel.

Speaking of extensions, Burrows also revealed that AmaWaterways is currently working on updating its reservations system to allow guests to book any land extension regardless of which river cruise itinerary they’re taking.

“It’s physically impossible in our reservation system today… from 2027 onwards, there’s the possibility that you can actually attach any extension to any itinerary.”

Coming soon, AmaWaterways will build out its land extension program to include cities throughout Europe that aren’t normally associated with river cruising, places like Edinburgh, Dublin, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Athens, among others.

The program is not a group travel option but is instead priced at “ones and twos.”

“City Breaks or they might be called City Stays… it’s so new, we haven’t even got a name for it yet,” Burrows said.

Mandarin Oriental Packages

Burrows also spoke about an initiative that AmaWaterways quietly rolled out in partnership with Mandarin Oriental about a year ago, giving travel advisors the option to book a land extension stay at a Mandarin Oriental hotel.

The most popular city for this program is Vienna, Burrows said, adding that the package includes a private driver, private guide, and an itinerary customized for the guest based on a pre-trip questionnaire.

“It’s a complete standalone, independent product, priced for ones and twos,” he said. Cities that advisors can offer a Mandarin Oriental land extension in include Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Geneva, Prague, Amsterdam, and coming soon, Budapest.

Cooking with Nonna

One of the new landside experiences that AmaWaterways is expanding, specifically with its City Escapes, is an extension of an onboard program the line secretly began piloting onboard Seine River cruises last year.

Called “Cooking with Nonna,” the onboard version of the experience brings a French grandmother onboard every sailing of the line’s two Seine River ships for an exclusive (no more than 12 people) afternoon French baking class – what Burrows called a “flour up the fingernails” experience.

(The program is in partnership with “Cooking with Nonna,” an Italian-owned company, thus the use of the Italian word for grandmother.)

“Cooking with Nonna” is available on the Seine this year and starting next year will roll out to all France river sailings. The ultimate goal, Burrows said, is to have a “Nonna” experience on every sailing across Europe.

“The ultimate aim is to have a cooking with a German grandma, cooking with a Hungarian grandma, etc.,” Burrows said.

Starting this year with the City Escapes, however, the “Cooking with Nonna” experience extends landside, specifically on the Seine River City Escape. On these sailings, guests can choose to visit the “Cooking with Noona” workshop in Paris for a hands-on macaron baking class.

Hiking, Biking & Wellness

One of the newest developments Burrows talked about with the travel advisors onboard TMP on the River this year is the introduction of fitness hikes. The concept launched on AmaWaterways’ website just days before TMP on the River began.

“We want to really promote our wellness instructors. They are here but they’re only used by the community onboard that does the wellness program,” Burrows explained.

To get more use out of the wellness instructors, they now join all guided bike rides (as sweepers at the back) and lead fitness hikes.

Unlike guided hikes, which are also available, fitness hikes do not have tour content. They are specifically designed to get people up and moving – at a fast clip, Burrows warned.

“If there’s any content to a hike, an attraction to see, a thing to visit, we use a local guide,” he said, adding that there is at least one hike on every single itinerary, some of which can be up to 10 kilometers. Longer hikes can be split in half so guests don’t have to do the entire thing.

“It’s essentially something like a figure eight. Guests can do one or both.”

For Advisors Only

Burrows also spent some time talking about advisor-facing changes coming to AmaWaterways that have nothing to do with the onboard or landside experience for clients.

One such change being worked on is the website, which Burrows admits AmaWaterways jumped the gun on when it released the new version with the new branding.

“This was a push to try and do the rebranding before the end of the year. Sometimes patience is better,” he said.

For the time being, advisors can visit the Travel Advisor Portal on the new website to gain access to the old website.

Burrows also said that AmaWaterways is continuing to look at how to provide a paper doc service that would allow travel advisors – at their own expense – send paper docs to their clients. The cruise line is currently working with a UK-based communications company to see what is possible.

“Which means, from next year, we may – and I do stress may – have an option where, at your discretion, you can send paper docs from the system. We are listening to you,” he emphasized.