‘There’s room for all of us’
On stage, Celebrity Cruises’ recently appointed international vice-president Giles Hawke reassured delegates that its new river brand – Celebrity River Cruises – would not flood the market. Instead, he hopes to attract new customers to the world’s rivers and expand the sector’s overall client base.
Following January’s announcement of the premium line’s plan for a river cruise brand, with the first two of 10 river ships arriving in 2027, there were fears this could cause overcrowding on Europe’s rivers, but Hawke stressed that this would not happen.
“There’s room for all of us,” he said. “I hope we can grow the segment rather than move passengers around within it.”
Hawke promised that Celebrity’s river ships would have a “transformative upper deck” with Celebrity bringing design elements of its Edge-class ships to the rivers.
While ruling out any kind of magic carpet, the moveable platform cantilevered off the side of Edge-class vessels, he promised that Celebrity would be “doing things differently”.
