Crystal AirCruises Charters Customization

Recently, Crystal Cruises quietly dropped its upcoming Crystal AirCruises itineraries from its website to display the luxury brand’s Boeing 777—dubbed Crystal Skye—available only for a complete charter.

No longer will its highly anticipated preplanned routes in partnership with The Peninsula Hotels be reservable on an individual basis.

We discussed the new direction with Crystal Cruises CEO and President Edie Rodriguez in an exclusive Q&A below:

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What prompted Crystal AirCruises to change its course?

[With] demand for the charter market, the world is getting wealthier, and the wealthy want to travel in their groups of family reunions and in their own groups of folks, whether it’s sort of [a] YPO organization or multi-generation travel. So, the demand for the charter business was so robust.

As we said from day one, we will perpetually tweak and evolve our model, and so this was the right model for us at this time.

It didn't have anything to do with bookings perhaps not being as strong as anticipated?

No, the bookings were good, but the charter model was definitely more of an opportunity to deliver greater ROI.

How does this affect the partnership with The Peninsula Hotels?

We have a great partnership with The Peninsula. They were very comfortable with our decision, and we look forward to working together on a myriad of future endeavors.

What can guests who had reserved the original AirCruises expect?

They can certainly charter it, and we can customize it if they’d like to come back and do it that way with us. But we were very very gracious and generous in our compensation to [them] and their travel agents that booked them on us. So, they’re very happy.

Will Crystal Skye still be outfitted as previously announced?

Exactly, yes it will. I just had the pleasure of having dinner with our crew on Monday night, and they were just in our office today because there’s a crew of about 18 of them. They are all in Miami this week for training, and they all came by our office today to meet the team.

They’re just a wonderful mini United Nations. All of them speak multiple languages. They were just delightful. I’m very very excited, and they have really jelled as a family and a team. I’m ecstatic with what I'm seeing from that team.

READ MORE: Crystal Luxury Air Prepares for April Launch with Bombardier Jet

How far along is the hardware conversion on that?

Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s almost done. We’ve owned the plane for quite awhile, but we will actually take full delivery of it fully outfitted in early August. 

What are the first planned charters on Crystal Skye?

Well, we've chartered it to our parent company [Genting Hong Kong], so there will be several journeys out of Asia initially, and then we’ve got several other charter clients that [are] planning to do different things with it.

When you have a 777 aircraft that can fly for over 16 hours, you can literally go around the world in a day or two if that’s your desire so the options are really quite extraordinary as long as the airport can handle a 777.

How will Crystal AirCruises now be differentiated from Crystal Luxury Air?

The way it’s differentiated, Crystal Luxury Air is a 12-seater Bombardier Global Express, and that’s really for Point A to Point B flying and/or to or from your Crystal experience for 12 people or less.

The 777 with 84 revenue seats is a different ballgame altogether. Again, flight range is over 16 hours, and we provide a totally customized turnkey solution including every aspect of the land. So, certainly somebody could charter just the plane, but really the difference is that they will tell us the itinerary they want to do. And we will, in concert with them, design and execute exactly what they want from the hotels to Michelin star dining to the land-based experiences.

Then our beautiful 777 Crystal Skye will get them to and from their customized itinerary. It’s right back to ECO: Exclusivity, Customization and Options. 

So, would you say this is really taking the original Crystal AirCruises concept and just making it more of a customizable product now?

Exactly, that’s exactly what it is. It’s really the same experience, but it’s customized with the itineraries and the dates they want to charter for their individual groups. And, of course, the charter price is the charter price.

So, just because there are 84 flatbed seats doesn’t mean they need 84 people. They may have groups of 60, and they’re just willing to cover the additional cost by leaving those 24 seats empty in that example.

READ MORE: Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony to Receive Major Redesigns

How is the future of the rest of the Crystal portfolio looking?

It’s great. Everything is going really really well. We’re very excited later on this summer to take delivery of our first two new-build river vessels: the Bach and the Mahler. They will be twins, each hosting 106 guests.

Our Crystal Esprit is doing phenomenally well. She’s completely sold out in her Venice, Dubrovnik/Dubrovnik, Venice itineraries, and she’s enjoying the Adriatic throughout the summer when she will reposition in October to the British West Indies: Saint Martin, including Saint Barts overnight.

Our beautiful Serenity and Symphony continue to do extremely well. Very proud. They just won two different awards: the Wave Award for the best suites in the luxury category, outdid even all those new-builds and also won best suites for Global Traveler. So, we are very bullish on our brand.

And, of course, Symphony is going in for an extensive dry-dock that when it comes out—the second sailing after it comes out—I’m hosting the president’s cruise, which I’m very proud to say is oversold. And her sister vessel will go in for her dry-dock in ’18.

So, things are going great. We’re really proud of our portfolio and our guest satisfaction rating. We actually won two Wave Awards last Thursday night in LA. The second was the highest guest satisfaction rating of any luxury cruise line. So, two great testaments to what we are delivering with the Crystal experience across the portfolio.

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