Viking Cruises has begun operating a couple of Longships under its river brand exclusively for Chinese travelers. While the line only plans to introduce two new riverboats for English speakers in 2017, it is currently banking heavily on the ever-growing China outbound market now and into the future.
When the Viking Ocean Cruises brand brought over its Viking Star to the Caribbean for the first time, company founder and chairman, Torstein Hagen, outlined at a press briefing: "We will have Longships redesigned and recommissioned for Mandarin speakers …," adding that there will be, "… top notch Chinese food, only Mandarin spoken, the same way we do it with the North American market. And this could be a big market too, but it will have nothing to do with the ships that are operating for the North American market. But it is a way of continuing to grow the company."
"It's been a project we've been working on for quite awhile," said Viking executive Jeff Dash, dating back to 2009 when Viking first devised a business plan related to China. After establishing the ocean brand, the company began to revisit the Chinese river project late last year.
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The statistics that encouraged Viking to seek out this endeavor are twofold. One, outbound China is the biggest market to contribute revenue to the rest of the world, surpassing the United States in 2013, and two, the quantity of Chinese nationals visiting Europe is projected to be the same size or larger than North Americans by 2020.
"Our goal is to be the lead paradigm shift in the world that someone from China can come to Europe and be as comfortable as they are at home because one of our founding principles as a company is that nobody should ever leave home and be less comfortable," Dash said.
In order to accomplish that objective, Viking has crafted a one hundred percent Mandarin speaking environment, save for the nautical staff, designed from the bottom up with dedicated signage, toiletries and eight guides, each assigned to 25 guests. From a culinary standpoint, ships have a regional Szechuan chef, Cantonese chef and fusion chef for trying European food. The line even sourced one of the judges from "MasterChef China" to develop the cuisine.
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The itineraries have also been modified, starting on the Rhine and expanding to the Danube in 2017. To start, it's a 10-night voyage from Amsterdam to Basel with an overnight at the former and two overnights at the latter to utilize the riverboat as total accommodations.
"We can't control the hotels," Dash explained. "We can't get the hotels to deliver the experience we wanted, so we modified the program to use the ship as a hotel in the bookends, and we control the experience."
Hagen concluded, "I can assure you it will be a success," and when asked if a riverboat dedicated to the Chinese market might lead to a dedicated ocean ship as well, he admitted to the possibility.
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