When Royal Caribbean Group announced the pending sale of boutique cruise line Azamara to Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm, the travel industry wondered if it meant the three-ship company would grow.
Less than a week later, Sycamore announced plans to buy a fourth sister ship for Azamara.
"Actions speak louder than words," said incoming Azamara President Carol Cabezas. "Giving us a ship within a week is as clear as it gets."
Cabezas has been chief operating officer of Azamara for 3 1/2 years and will become president when the sale closes, as expected, this quarter. Former Holland America Line President Orlando Ashford will become executive chairman of Azamara.
Cabezas has spent more than 20 years with Royal Caribbean Group in a variety of roles across sales, finance and revenue management with Azamara, Celebrity Cruises and the corporation itself.
And with the new ownership, Azamara will indeed grow beyond the fourth ship, the former Pacific Princess, Cabezas said.
"That is definitely the intent," she said. "This is the first step in our journey."
One thing Cabezas emphasizes: Azamara will grow but will not change its "Destination Immersion" branding or its style of cruising, which focuses on longer stays in destinations and more overnights.
"Our people, our product and our relationships are not changing," Cabezas said in a telephone interview with TravelPulse. "The product we deliver, our value proposition and our mission connecting people to people and people to culture and destinations is a great one."
She noted that the Azamara team will stay in place: "The people and product are not changing. Our relationships and how we work with travel advisors and customers is not going to change." That means commission levels and cruise credits are staying in place. "Whatever we have committed to, we will honor," she said.
One thing that will change: the company's technology will be upgraded as it separates from the Royal Caribbean corporate umbrella. "We'll have to build out our own system and become even easier to do business with," Cabezas said.
Azamara operates three 690-passenger ships - the Azamara Journey, Azamara Quest and Azamara Pursuit - that were originally built as part of the R Class for now-shuttered Renaissance Cruises. The Pacific Princess is virtually identical - it first entered service in 1999 as R3 for Renaissance.
The other four former R-Class ships operate for Oceania Cruises as the Insignia, Sirena, Regatta and Nautica.
If Azamara builds or buys ships, they likely will be a similar size, Cabezas said.
"There definitely is an advantage to being able to navigate in this kind of vessel," she explained. "Not only can we get to ports that larger ships simply cannot enter, we're also able to get into rivers and better locations in the heart of cities."
The fourth ship gives Azamara the chance to explore new places.
"There also are a number of places we've only visited on a very limited occasion that we'd love to go back to," Cabezas said. "We just didn't have enough ships to do it with."
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