Voice of Luxury: Chris Prelog, president, Windstar Cruises
Q. How has 2022 been for Windstar?
A. We are super excited to be back in operation. All six ships are running and doing really well. We have also eased our Covid restrictions and filled our ships with crew – more than 90% of our crew returned [post-Covid]. At the same time, we have moved our head office from Seattle to Miami and we are announcing new deployments, so it’s busy but it’s a good busy. We’ve spent the last few months building momentum and business is performing very well. Currently, we’re taking on more bookings than in 2019.
Q. What is currently selling well?
A. We’re seeing a couple of trends for the Med and the Greek islands – they’re doing really well and we’ve seen lots of bookings there. We’ve also seen a substantial increase in demand for French Polynesia. We have a ship permanently in Tahiti and that bucket-list destination is selling well, as is the Caribbean.
Q. What other trends are emerging post-pandemic?
A. First of all, we’re seeing more new-to-brand guests come to us seeking smaller ships. What we’re trying to do is offer choice, where you book the cruise the way you want it. For example, do you want all-inclusive or à la carte? Do you want an all-sail ship or do you want an all-suite ship? Where do you want to go? We have a really wide variety of offerings and we are seeing that attract guests from different backgrounds. We’ve also seen a good uptake on longer voyages. Next year, we have our 85-day Grand European Bucket List Adventure cruise. It’s 22 countries and you touch a lot of the key and smaller ports, so that has taken some interest. Guests like to spend a little bit more time away now than before and [they want to] be a bit slower because everyone is catching up on missed vacations.
Q. How are you supporting UK agents?
A. We have just renewed our partnership with The Cruise Line [our general sales agent] and we’re super excited about that. We also have [business development manager, UK and Ireland] Anna Perrott – she is our number-one person in the UK and we really want to grow the market there. We have some very loyal travel advisors who have sold Windstar for a long time and have a really good history with the ships so we try to harness that. We’ve also hosted quite a few UK trade and media on our ships this summer to showcase the product, and we will continue to do that. Plus we’ve got very good booking incentives. If you combine all of that, I think we will grow the UK market well.
Q. For agents who haven’t sold Windstar before, what are the line’s key USPs?
A. We have small ships and we have a lot of choice. We are luxury, but we are casual luxury. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. It’s a highly personalised service environment, but it’s unpretentious and without the stiffness. We don’t have formal nights and you don’t have to wear a jacket. That’s a very different feel to the ultra-luxury cruises out there.
Q. What are the biggest opportunities and challenges facing Windstar right now?
A. There are still challenges depending on which countries we are visiting. For example, Greece still requires you to be tested before you board a cruise [even though] you don’t need to be tested to go into Greece, so it’s communicating those things and making sure that guests understand that. We’ve got a lot of new ports and that’s our opportunity, that’s where we are diversifying our cruise offering. We will be in Australia and New Zealand early next year and we will start in Saudi Arabia at the end of next year. That is very exciting and we are all looking forward to taking our guests there.
Q. Is fleet expansion on the cards for Windstar?
A. We expanded three of our ships during the pandemic. We cut them in half and made them bigger so we are now absorbing that expansion. We added 100 guests to each ship, which represents a 32% capacity increase across the fleet. The ships are fantastic and have been completely revamped – that was certainly our growth during the pandemic and we are building the future on that. Other than that, we currently don’t have any other plans.
Q. Finally, what does the word luxury mean to you?
A. Luxury means many things to many people. At Windstar, luxury is choice. We offer lots of choice, but we also offer amazing food and a highly personalised service. Personalisation is always a luxury. To me, luxury also means a relaxed ambience and having people around you who are like-minded.