The 820 passenger, 22,000gt Marco Polo has operated in the UK market during the past two summer seasons trading under the Transocean Tours brand. This success has encouraged CMS, who has been acting as UK gsa for Transocean Tours since 2006, to extend her presence on the UK market in 2010 with a year round programme of cruises to offer a much wider and varied choice of sailings.

Chris Coates, director of CMS said, ‘We have finalised a five year time charter agreement with Marco Polo Chartering Company and in 2010 will be working directly with the Piraeus based Global Maritime Group, the vessel’s existing ship managers, and owners to develop the product on the British market.’

Distribution of the product is via a select group of firmly established British tour operating partners and the retail travel trade, notes Coates. ‘While our core market will predominantly be the British sector, we believe the programme will also appeal to the wider North American, Australasian and South African English speaking markets where sales representation announcements will be made shortly.’

The vessel’s current Transocean Tours scheduled winter Antarctica 2009-10 programme will be replaced by a new winter programme following the existing 32 night Caribbean cruise sailing from Tilbury on October 6, 2009 which will operate as scheduled for the international markets. A new 15 night Canary Islands cruise from Bremerhaven on the November 8, 2009 will also be added for the German market.

Following a short docking period in the UK, the vessel will commence operations under her new livery on January 2, 2010 with a new ex-UK winter programme. London Tilbury will be Marco Polo’s home port and her 2010 programme will comprise 24 ex-UK ‘no fly’ sailings featuring the Amazon, Orinoco and West Indies during the winter months followed by a season of Nordic cruises to Scandinavia and the Baltic & Russia, Iceland, the British Isles, the Mediterranean and Canary Islands.

With minimal numbers of children cruising aboard Marco Polo this year, she will also be positioned as an adult only (16 years and over) product, informs Coates.

The 800 passenger, 17,000gt Ocean Countess will also be joining the Cruise & Maritime Voyages fleet next April under an initial two season (2010 & 2011) deck and engine charter arrangement from the Greek based Majestic International Cruises Group, also managers of the Ocean Majesty.

Ocean Countess will operate a year round programme of 22 ex-UK regional ‘no fly’ sailings operating from Hull, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Greenock, Liverpool and Plymouth with a summer season of Nordic cruises to Scandinavia, the Baltic & Russia, Iceland, the British Isles, the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. Prior to delivery, Ocean Countess will undergo a £3m refurbishment and upgrade programme.

Chris Coates told Seatrade, ‘Despite the significant increase in the larger resort style vessels, the reducing number of smaller, traditional and lower capacity vessels generally operated by the independent and privately owned shipping companies, still have a huge following on the British market.’

He added, ‘we are all of course still mindful of the recessionary pressures facing the British and global economies but believe that our largely grey market sector is more resilient and our strong price positioning will assist us in achieving our targets as the market begins to recover during 2010 and 2011.’

The 27,000 passenger capacity summer 2010 programme goes on sale during the last week of August. Fares lead in at £199 for a 3 night weekend spring bank holiday mini cruise to Amsterdam and Antwerp.
---

They best hope Pacific gets a "get out of jail" pass soon then.

I love MARCO POLO and I am quite happy to see that she is now going to be marketed in North America, Australia/NZ and South Africa where she has always been very popular, in addition to the UK.

What a pity that Cruise & Maritime did not pick up the Orient Lines name - between that and the ship it would have people flocking to her. There are still a lot of people out there who have a lot of loyalty to Orient Lines, myself included.

Marco Polo is already popular with the UK market.

i'm pretty surprised by this new enterprise

Marco Polo is a really nice ship and Ocean Countess
will gain more and more history every year she is
continuing

so there will be no renaming of ships , does anyone
knows anything about this new livery?

I guess that should this ship be built, it would be in co-operation with Premicon, the company that also own's "Astor".

As for various currently laid up vessels, Transocean won't be interested in chartering vessels not even remotely on par with the upgraded "Astor" (major refurbishment due in spring, 2010) nor will they charter "Norwegian Dream" or similar-sized vessels, which are simply too big.

Best,

Raoul

[ 08-15-2009: Message edited by: r.fiebig ]