Dubrovnik, Croatia: passengers on cruises are drawn both to ancient history and recent conflict
At the end of Roger and Me, Michael Moore’s documentary about the decline of his home town of Flint, Michigan, a woman who has been working in tourism says “I’m going to move to Israel and maybe I’ll become the ministress of tourism.” The film then cuts to the intifada, the Palestinian uprising, and a horde of young men in the streets throwing stones. The operators of cruises—particularly those who specialise in the Middle East—might feel the same dismay about the recent revolutions and unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Jordan, countries which have been some of their most popular destinations.
Yet they shouldn’t. After years of helping to organise lectures on such cruises, I can vouch that while it is history that draws people, their interest embraces events so recent they barely count as the past. I first led a party on a cruise to north Africa ten years ago, and realised that visitors to Libya were as fascinated by a glimpse of life under Colonel Gaddafi’s regime as they were by the archaeological sites of Leptis Magna or Cyrene. Visitors to Cairo may soon add Tahrir Square to their must-see lists after the treasures of Tutankhamun.
Cruises to the Baltic ports of Poland now offer a visit to the old Lenin shipyard, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that helped break down the iron curtain, on the way to the traditional Baroque attractions of the Hanseatic town centre of Gdansk. Four decades after the Vietnam war, old Vietcong supply tunnels offer a vivid reminder of that conflict, attracting the same visitors as Buddhist temples do.
I’ve watched young Turks, Australians and New Zealanders walking thoughtfully through the memorial grounds of Gallipoli and later met them in the ruins of Troy. I’ve accompanied visitors to St Petersburg who were dazzled by the city’s tsarist past, but told me that their most powerful memory was the lecture on the horrors of the siege of Leningrad. I’ve listened to passengers joining in readings of Norse sagas in Iceland, or arguing over the Cuban revolution.
Cruise tourism is a huge business worth around $26bn in revenue worldwide, estimates Oivind Mathisen, editor of the New York-based Cruise Industry News. More than 1m Britons took a cruise in 2010—this year it’s predicted that the global number of passengers will be nearly 19m. History-themed cruises are only a small slice of that, but are increasingly popular. At the mass-market end, the ships are getting bigger; the latest vessels carrying up to 6,000 passengers and 3,000 crew. In the more niche markets, some of the smaller, independent cruise lines have extensive lecture and excursion programmes, with highly-qualified, often academic speakers.
Some operators, such as All Leisure Holidays, cater for older, more affluent travellers. It runs the biggest fleet of British-based ships under the cruise brands Voyages of Discovery, Swan Hellenic and Hebridean Island. Dudley Smith, the company’s director of operations, thinks demographic change—a greying population that is also now fitter and more intellectually curious—is driving the popularity of such cruises.
Peter Rushton and his wife Rosemary run the P&R Agency, which supplies lecturers to companies like Saga, Cunard, Fred. Olsen, P&O and Oceania. “Last year, we had some 1,100 speakers on 41 ships representing about 14 different companies,” he told me. In addition to historians, his experts include ornithologists, marine biologists and other specialists, including a sprinkling of journalists, politicians and former ambassadors.
“There are four main criteria you look for,” Rushton says. “A good lecturer at sea must be authoritative, informative, fluent and—above all—entertaining.” As some academics discover, cruise audiences can be discriminating. Unlike undergraduates, perhaps, they will vote with their feet. A lecturer who finds his audience leaving for a chef’s demonstrations of raw vegetable carving is unlikely to be invited back.
There is evidence that good lectures can boost bookings even when the passenger is initially concerned with destination, cost and comfort. Mo Holland, lecture programme manager for Voyages of Discovery, believes that intellectual talks earn loyalty from passengers: “an ex-ambassador who’d recently cruised with us said it was obvious from his audience that people wanted to come back because we took the lecture programme seriously,” she said.
But lecture highlights are not always predictable. Almost a decade ago, I introduced a lecturer on a north African cruise who was as entertaining as he was erudite. Unfortunately, that day his sea legs deserted him. The pauses and sips of water became more frequent. Eventually, turning ashen, he offered a hurried apology and vanished through the stage curtains. I jumped to my feet, followed him and found him in the throes of sea-sickness. I suggested that he retire to his cabin, but he rallied bravely. As we returned to the stage, we were greeted by a burst of applause, and realised our lapel microphones had broadcast the entire episode. If I remember right, the professor didn’t have to buy his own drinks for the rest of the cruise.
At the end of Roger and Me, Michael Moore’s documentary about the decline of his home town of Flint, Michigan, a woman who has been working in tourism says “I’m going to move to Israel and maybe I’ll become the ministress of tourism.” The film then cuts to the intifada, the Palestinian uprising, and a horde of young men in the streets throwing stones. The operators of cruises—particularly those who specialise in the Middle East—might feel the same dismay about the recent revolutions and unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Jordan, countries which have been some of their most popular destinations.
Yet they shouldn’t. After years of helping to organise lectures on such cruises, I can vouch that while it is history that draws people, their interest embraces events so recent they barely count as the past. I first led a party on a cruise to north Africa ten years ago, and realised that visitors to Libya were as fascinated by a glimpse of life under Colonel Gaddafi’s regime as they were by the archaeological sites of Leptis Magna or Cyrene. Visitors to Cairo may soon add Tahrir Square to their must-see lists after the treasures of Tutankhamun.
Cruises to the Baltic ports of Poland now offer a visit to the old Lenin shipyard, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that helped break down the iron curtain, on the way to the traditional Baroque attractions of the Hanseatic town centre of Gdansk. Four decades after the Vietnam war, old Vietcong supply tunnels offer a vivid reminder of that conflict, attracting the same visitors as Buddhist temples do.
I’ve watched young Turks, Australians and New Zealanders walking thoughtfully through the memorial grounds of Gallipoli and later met them in the ruins of Troy. I’ve accompanied visitors to St Petersburg who were dazzled by the city’s tsarist past, but told me that their most powerful memory was the lecture on the horrors of the siege of Leningrad. I’ve listened to passengers joining in readings of Norse sagas in Iceland, or arguing over the Cuban revolution.
Cruise tourism is a huge business worth around $26bn in revenue worldwide, estimates Oivind Mathisen, editor of the New York-based Cruise Industry News. More than 1m Britons took a cruise in 2010—this year it’s predicted that the global number of passengers will be nearly 19m. History-themed cruises are only a small slice of that, but are increasingly popular. At the mass-market end, the ships are getting bigger; the latest vessels carrying up to 6,000 passengers and 3,000 crew. In the more niche markets, some of the smaller, independent cruise lines have extensive lecture and excursion programmes, with highly-qualified, often academic speakers.
Some operators, such as All Leisure Holidays, cater for older, more affluent travellers. It runs the biggest fleet of British-based ships under the cruise brands Voyages of Discovery, Swan Hellenic and Hebridean Island. Dudley Smith, the company’s director of operations, thinks demographic change—a greying population that is also now fitter and more intellectually curious—is driving the popularity of such cruises.
Peter Rushton and his wife Rosemary run the P&R Agency, which supplies lecturers to companies like Saga, Cunard, Fred. Olsen, P&O and Oceania. “Last year, we had some 1,100 speakers on 41 ships representing about 14 different companies,” he told me. In addition to historians, his experts include ornithologists, marine biologists and other specialists, including a sprinkling of journalists, politicians and former ambassadors.
“There are four main criteria you look for,” Rushton says. “A good lecturer at sea must be authoritative, informative, fluent and—above all—entertaining.” As some academics discover, cruise audiences can be discriminating. Unlike undergraduates, perhaps, they will vote with their feet. A lecturer who finds his audience leaving for a chef’s demonstrations of raw vegetable carving is unlikely to be invited back.
There is evidence that good lectures can boost bookings even when the passenger is initially concerned with destination, cost and comfort. Mo Holland, lecture programme manager for Voyages of Discovery, believes that intellectual talks earn loyalty from passengers: “an ex-ambassador who’d recently cruised with us said it was obvious from his audience that people wanted to come back because we took the lecture programme seriously,” she said.
But lecture highlights are not always predictable. Almost a decade ago, I introduced a lecturer on a north African cruise who was as entertaining as he was erudite. Unfortunately, that day his sea legs deserted him. The pauses and sips of water became more frequent. Eventually, turning ashen, he offered a hurried apology and vanished through the stage curtains. I jumped to my feet, followed him and found him in the throes of sea-sickness. I suggested that he retire to his cabin, but he rallied bravely. As we returned to the stage, we were greeted by a burst of applause, and realised our lapel microphones had broadcast the entire episode. If I remember right, the professor didn’t have to buy his own drinks for the rest of the cruise.
