Last week, Emerald Waterways christened the Emerald Destiny in Vienna. Travel Weekly's Michelle Baran caught up with Glen Moroney, the founder and chairman of Emerald's parent company, Scenic, to talk about the growth and the challenges of the river cruising market.
Q: How does Emerald Waterways differ from its sister brand, Scenic?
A: When you're with Scenic, absolutely everything is included. With this ship, it's the same size as Scenic, but Scenic takes between 155 and 167 guests, and this takes 182, so the average cabin size is slightly smaller. It doesn't include all beverages, and some sightseeing is optional. There are a few things that are optional. It's still an extremely good value, gratuities are included, etc. But it's our four-star product, [and] Scenic is five.
Q: Why did you decide to launch a second river cruise line?
Glen Moroney
A: Well, Scenic can compete on anything, except price. When you're talking about quality and even value for the money, it's an exceptional product, and our ratings certainly prove that. But we couldn't compete on price. And, in fact, the volume of the market is at a lower-price product.
Q: Who is the target demographic for Emerald? Does it skew younger than Scenic?
A: We certainly believed that it would, but the age demographic has ended up being really similar. With Scenic there's been people in their 20s through to their early 80s. We're definitely getting a younger audience on Scenic. We would think that this ship and this experience would appeal more to a younger demographic, but it appears to be the same as Scenic.
Q: When I saw that Uniworld was developing a river cruise brand for millennials I was surprised that Emerald Waterways hadn't taken that approach.
A: It's not a market that we have a great deal of experience in, and I don't know whether a river cruise is necessarily an experience that millennials want. I'm not convinced, and it's certainly not something we've got in any planning.
Q: When and why did you first decide to get into the river cruise business?
A: It was probably back in 2004. A person I had put on to develop my European touring program told me that I should definitely have a look at river cruising, that it was a lovely way to travel. So he convinced me to develop a program, and we were selling into another operator at the time. By the time we got the brochure out that year, all the capacity had pretty much gone. So for the next year we chartered a few sailings, and they were very successful, and it became very clear that if we wanted it to grow we'd have to build our own. We came over in January of 2007 and started meeting with the shipyards. Our first ship, the Scenic Sapphire, was delivered in 2008.
Q: How much has that part of your business grown since?
A: It's now the majority. We've got 23 ships in total now with both Scenic and Emerald and with some of the ships we charter on top of that, it's now definitely the largest part of the business. The real difference there is that Scenic's touring products were designed primarily for an Australian traveler. When it comes to river cruising, it's opened up a range of new markets. The majority of our guests now come from outside Australia.
Q: What are the biggest challenges in this market?
A: Obviously, it's a very competitive market. I think there's still significant growth potential in river cruising for everybody, mainly because it is still a relatively small business compared with ocean cruising. Yes, there are some challenges with infrastructure and, yes, water [levels are] always an issue. But even with those things, we're working on ways to minimize the impact. It's still got great potential, although I don't believe that we're going to see the exponential growth in capacity that we've seen over the last five or six years. It will be more steady.