easyCruise
Mon 17 Feb 2003
Stelios targets cruise sector with latest budget venture
Lloyd’s List reports easyGroup chairman, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, is considering launching a new budget cruise venture, possibly as early as 2004.
Stelios told the paper there was ample opportunity to cut costs from the traditional cruise model. He plans to introduce a ‘hop-on, hop-off’ service, probably based around the Mediterranean in the summer and Caribbean in the winter, where passengers would be able to embark and disembark wherever they chose.
He said: ‘If you want to get on in Barcelona and get off in Nice, that would be fine. If you want to see Italy, that would be fine too.’
The format would break with the traditional cruise mould, Stelios said, where ‘you fly as a group and you sail as a group on a fixed itinerary. You’re trapped. There’s a lot of flexibility missing there.’
Costs could be cut through unbundling the product, he added, with ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffets scrapped and passengers simply paying separately for what they wanted to consume.
The cruise project is still in its infancy, while Stelios concentrates his efforts on expanding the easyInternetcafé business in the US and the introduction of easyCinema this year.
But he said that, in keeping with his pattern of launching one company a year, he would be ready to focus on a cruise venture by the end of 2004. He also pointed out that, in common with the airline industry, the cost structure and inflexibility of the main cruise companies created openings for a budget operator.
‘The P&Os of this world are spending 20-25% of their revenues on travel agents and expensive middlemen. In the day of the internet, that’s unacceptable,’ he declared.