By
Rebecca Gibson |
Azamara Club Cruises has introduced a new Stay Longer, Experience More destination programme to immerse guests in the destinations its ships visit.
Expanding Azamara’s Destination Immersion offering, the new Stay Longer, Experience More programme comprises three pillars: Immersive Itineraries, Cruise Global, Connect Local destination experiences; and Boutique Hotels at Sea.
Azamara Journey and Azamara Quest will offer more immersive itineraries that deliver longer, or overnight stays in more than 200 ports worldwide in 2017 and 2018, including 35 maiden ports.
The ships will offer an expanded portfolio of World Events and Themed Voyages, taking guests to the Monaco Grand Prix, the World Cup, British Open, the Venice Redentore Festival. Another new product is Azamara’s Country Intensive Voyages, where the ships will spend time visiting multiple destinations in one country, such as Japan, Italy, Spain, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Croatia and more.
Azamara’s new Cruise Global, Connect Local programme is designed to deliver personalised onshore experiences. The series includes Nights Local excursions for cultural nightlife experiences, and Meet Local offers immersive cultural experiences that provide people-to-people connections at the homes, farms and villas of local families. Meanwhile, the Stay Local series enables guests to enjoy overland tours during the voyage and pre- and post-voyage experiences. Guests can also use Customise Local to create their own tailored shore excursions.
To achieve its Boutique Hotels at Sea goal, Azamara remodelled both ships in 2016 and has also introduce destination-focused programming onboard. This will cover local culinary and beverage selections, travel movies, lectures and panel discussions on destinations and other relevant topics, as well as entertainment.
“Within this evolved positioning, there are two powerful guest deliverables,” said Larry Pimentel, president and CEO of Azamara Club Cruises. “The first is we're shifting from enabling our guests to immerse themselves in the destination, to delivering over 1,000 new and existing destination experiences for guests to select from in more than 70 countries. These experiences provide the second powerful deliverable: one-to-one human connection. Our on-land product will be curated to ensure guests get to connect in a personalised and unique way with the people in the destinations they visit, this may occur through people to people interaction, cultural experiences, enjoying local food and drink, music, events and so on.”