The 154-passenger ship features an inverted bow to improve hydrodynamics and make it more efficient and will be the third AE Expeditions ship with the advancement. It is slated to launch in Australia in December before sailing to the Northern Hemisphere in 2026.
EMEA sales director Andrew Turner told TTG he is currently planning a summer programme of ship visits – including overnights – for agents when Douglas Mawson arrives in the UK and Ireland next May.
"Agents will be able to get onboard Douglas Mawson next summer, but we’re still in the planning phase,” he said, speaking days after returning from a Jewels of the Arctic sailing onboard another AE Expeditions’ ship, Sylvia Earle.
“It’s not confirmed yet but hopefully there’ll be some overnight ship visits. These ships visits raise awareness about what makes our products different to others in the market. We’ve got the same hardware as numerous other expedition companies – it’s what we do with the hardware that’s different.”
Turner, though, highlighted the difficulties the line has communicating the expedition experiences available to agents’ customers during ship visits when the vessel is stationary. Turner revealed that on his recent 12-day expedition on Greg Mortimer, he spent approximately four-and-a-half hours a day off the ship.
“On ship visits, we can give agents a taster of our product, but we’re not able to show them how often we get customers on the Zodiacs and we can’t put out tannoy announcement saying a polar bear has been sighted,” he continued.
“It’s about trying to get the agents to understand we’re expensive, but the experience we can offer customers is so vast. For an extra £3,000, the experience is much deeper [than other lines].”
In the spring, AE Expeditions ran two overnight ship visits for the first time in Troon and Aberdeen.
Asked how successful they were, Turner said: “Everyone was happy with how they ran. We probably crammed a bit too much into the Troon visit, but we corrected the schedule in Aberdeen.”
Turner said the Douglas Mawson launch was “getting a lot of attention” down under, with the ship set to sail under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Douglas Mawson will be the third ship in the fleet to feature the Ulstein X-bow hull, Turner explained.
“If you’re going through the Drake Passage to Antarctica, any ship with this x-bow technology is going to cut through the water rather than bouncing up it,” he added.
“It makes the ship more efficient and helps reduce the bobbing up and down.”
