Expedition lines get creative between the poles

Meeting high demand

Interest in expedition cruising is at an all-time high and growing, according to a 2022 report from CLIA. The number of passengers sailing on expedition ships more than doubled from 2016 to 2022, the report found, and search results for expedition cruise travel to Antarctica grew by 51% in 2022 compared with 2019. 

Cruise lines have responded. The expedition sector grew to 18 suppliers last year from just five a decade ago, according to CLIA. Despite that growth, total expedition berths make up a sliver (1.5%) of global cruise capacity.

The baseline experience that many expedition products offer is similar: small ships, ranging from less than 100 to a few hundred passengers, capable of accessing remote locations; “water toys” for exploration such as Zodiacs and kayaks; an expedition team and local experts, of which nearly every brand claims to have the most experienced members.

Luxury expedition lines also crow about their quality dining, guest-to-space and guest-to-crew ratios, service and staterooms. 

The lines tend to differentiate themselves the most visibly with next-level amenities: helicopters, submarines, an underwater lounge. Or they may be the first to introduce a more environmentally sustainable power source. 

And now, increasingly, shoulder season itineraries offer lines another chance to differentiate themselves.

New destinations

Some of the most-established brands have long diversified their expedition offerings. For instance, only a small percentage of Lindblad Expeditions’ 550 annual sailings involve the poles: The line’s 17 ships visit more than 120 countries and territories, said chief commercial officer Noah Brodsky, including in Oceania, Central and South America, the Mekong River, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Galapagos. 

“Lindblad Expeditions was founded on the tenet of global exploration, not just polar exploration,” Brodsky said. “After almost 60 years of doing this, you’d think we would run out of ‘new’ places to explore, but we haven’t.” 

Its two newest ships, however, were certainly designed with polar exploration in mind and built with the highest-rated ice class for a passenger vessel. And while their two newest ships spend half the year breaking ice, their journeys between the poles offer passengers some new-to-brand experiences. 

One includes sailing from the southern tip of one continent to the southern tip of another. The March sailing on the National Geographic Resolution begins at the end of its Antarctica season at Cape Horn, the southernmost point in South America, and ends in Cape Town, near the southern tip of Africa. Later that month, the ship will sail another new itinerary, this one visiting East Africa and Madagascar with a safari expedition in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park offering a chance to see Africa’s Big Five: lions, leopards, elephants, Cape buffaloes and rhinos. 

During the Resolution’s August 2024 repositioning south from the Arctic, it will sail to Alaska’s Pribilof and Aleutian Islands and on to Japan’s island of Hokkaido, where it will introduce guests to the culture of the indigenous Ainu people.

Brodsky also said another area Lindblad plans to increase sailings to in 2025 is Egypt, with a new itinerary that traces Egyptian history from Pharaonic to modern times.

Another long-time expedition operator has also branched off into warm-water itineraries. Hurtigruten Expeditions, which will be renamed HX at the end of the year, generally spends all but two months (April and October) sailing the poles. Last year, the company began offering year-round Galapagos expeditions on a ship chartered from Ecuador-based Metropolitan Touring, a tour operator of which Hurtigruten owns a 24% share. 

This year, the cruise line will launch another route: a West African archipelago itinerary. The first sailing in November will depart from Dakar, Senegal, and spend several days sailing around Cape Verde and the Bissagos Islands. Hurtigruten will offer six sailings this winter and six in winter 2024. 

“Since we can offer unique itineraries during those short shoulder seasons, we are able to drive demand, especially as they are only available during that time,” said Alex McNeil, Hurtigruten’s senior vice president of expeditions product and guest experience. “And as they are not as costly operations as the polar regions, they are also naturally cheaper by design.”

These itineraries are in addition to the line’s regular shoulder-season itineraries that include the British Isles and South America in April and South America in October. 

Lines also view shoulder-season expeditions as a way to offer somewhere new to guests who have already been to the poles. Silversea Cruises maximizes its time in the polar regions in response to growing demand, said Bob Simpson, the line’s vice president of expeditions and product development, but it has developed shoulder-season itineraries for guests who want more expedition options. 

“Many of our guests have traveled to these regions multiple times as they have a strong affinity particularly to the expedition team and our luxury expedition product,” Simpson said. “Whenever we have the opportunity to develop new itineraries, and especially during the months ‘between the poles,’ we find that our past travelers will gravitate to any new exploration itineraries and, in fact, are typically the first to sign up.” 

Silversea is also offering new itineraries next year. The Silver Cloud will operate the line’s first voyages through South Africa and the Indian Ocean next year, with planned calls at Walvis Bay, Namibia, and Port Nolloth, South Africa, introducing travelers to the area’s culture and history. In 2025, the same ship will sail itineraries in Australia’s Kimberley region, Papua New Guinea, Bali and Indonesia, including Komodo National Park.

Some of the newer expedition brands are also eyeing the Kimberley region. Scenic Luxury Cruises and Tours, which has been a river cruise operator for much of its history, is planning itineraries there next year on one of the two expedition ships it launched over the past four years, the only two expedition ships that have helicopters. 

The Kimberley “is becoming a very hot region that everybody’s talking about,” said Ken Muskat, managing director of Scenic Group, which oversees the brand. 

The line also plans to sail its expedition vessels in the South Pacific, such as an itinerary from Papeete, French Polynesia, to Nadi, Fiji, next year. 

“Those are not expedition the way we think about it from a polar region perspective, but they’re still very much discovery and expedition for us,” Muskat said. “It’s around going to the destination, each round taking our helicopters to unique places that nobody can go to otherwise, it’s around the unique wildlife, it’s around exploring the culinary aspects of what the destination has to offer and bringing that back onboard.”

Success beyond the poles

Several cruise line executives said that Antarctica itineraries offer the highest yields in their cruise portfolios. But as the segment gets more crowded, some advisors say those prices are dropping. 

“There’s a lot of new ships [that have] entered the market, and it’s causing a little bit of a price war. It’s causing a little bit of the traditional players being a little upset over newbies in the market who are taking the market share,” Maguire said. “But that’s why they’re doing these offseason things, to try and help equalize and make themselves profitable.” 

While many polar-class ships naturally migrate to the Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere summer, brands with many ships often deploy vessels to warm-water regions instead. One is Seabourn Cruises, which has launched two expedition ships since 2022. 

The Seabourn Venture, the first of those ships, will sail a repositioning cruise on the Amazon River next year en route to the Arctic, but its sister ship, the Seabourn Pursuit, will head to the South Pacific and then the Kimberley region until it’s time to return to Antarctica. 

“We hope those will attract guests who are new to expedition as well as entice them to book another expedition voyage after sailing on a migration, shoulder-season voyage,” said Robin West, the line’s vice president of expeditions.

And according to West, while Antarctica and the Arctic, specifically Svalbard and the Northwest Passage, tend to be some of the line’s highest-yielding destinations, the Kimberley region is performing just as well.

“Kimberley is in the same category in terms of pricing and demand. So we’re seeing some really good returns in terms of yields coming out of the Kimberley season,” he said, adding that those yields are likely why more expedition cruise lines are looking to sail that destination.

While most cruise lines look for far-flung and remote destinations for their expedition ships, Viking offers expeditions in the heart of America. Both of the brand’s expedition ships sail the Great Lakes after leaving Antarctica, pingponging between U.S. cities including Milwaukee; Cleveland; Detroit; Duluth, Minn.; and New York as well as Toronto, Thunder Bay and the Georgian Bay in Canada.

Atlas Ocean Voyages, one of the newest entrants to the sector, began sailing to the poles in 2021. The luxury adventure line this year launched Epicurean Expeditions in the Mediterranean on one of its expedition ships, which remains there until heading back south to Antarctica. 

“We can’t just be another Med product there,” said Atlas CEO James Rodriguez.

The expedition swaps out polar experts for winners from the TV show “Top Chef” and gastronomic specialists who help guests explore the cultures and cuisines of the Mediterranean.

Next March, when the Antarctica season ends, the line plans to roll out a Cultural Expeditions product in South America, the Caribbean and on transatlantic sailings. These sailings will feature gastronomic experts and expedition team leaders who are historians well-versed in architecture, photography and an understanding of local cultures, he said, adding that such immersion is not exclusive to expedition destinations like Antarctica. 

“When we go into the Med and other areas, you are immersing yourself in the cultures there, as well,” Rodriguez said.