Al weer 30 jaar geleden .
Daarom vandaag een beetje nostalgie
een verslag van een andere tevreden klant
In the growth of the Cruise Industry in the past few decades, there has been several attempts at launching a ‘Low Cost’ Cruise Line, non seem to have met any significant success. So I decided to investigate, I have chosen the little known ‘Vacation Liners’ and Stelios’ ‘EasyCruise’.
In air travel the opposite is true with many Low-Cost airlines Like Ryanair, EasyJet, Southwest (for our American readers), So why has this failed so badly in cruising?
VACATION LINERS
I first heard about Vacation Liners in ‘Liners & Cruise Ships -3′ By Anthony Cooke, and to be honest that’s the only place I have heard them since. They purchased a Short Sea container ship in 1982, and transformed her into a small cruise ship for the budget traveller, The ship had a small swimming pool, a Piano bar and a restaurant that served as a disco at night. It could accommodate 176 passengers and had a crew of just 29. The ship was named Vacationer.
Vacation Liners BV provided a very basic service Buffet Meals, Little Entertainment and if you wanted a clean cabin, you cleaned it yourself! The idea was to sail the vessel out of Gibraltar to, Seville, Tangier and Malaga before returning to Gibraltar, The week-long cruise was targeted at the British Market, During the winter seasons the ship was laid up in Malaga.
In 1983 the cruise ship was featured in a british travel program and interest increased, However the people who booked had expectations far higher than what was provided, and even though they had a great deal they expected that the ship would have the mod-cons. They were let down, and that seems to have been the problem that then plagued this ship, That customers expectations of the floating accommodation is higher than the reality, and Business which fails to live up to expectation will find the are underwater sooner than they think.
In the second season the vessel was taken to the Caribbean for perform cruises there, In April of 1985 she grounded and had to be towed to port with a damaged propeller. On her return to Gibraltar in June 1985 she was briefly arrested for debt. Within the year she had been sold to and changed her name to Carib Vacationer, but this made no change to her schedule operating in the Med in the summer and Caribbean in the winter. However in 1987 she was laid up, In 1992 she was almost reactivated, but the concern collapsed and the vessel, now renamed ‘Coral Princess’ seized on behalf of her unpaid crew.
Since then there has been little news of her, and It would be wonderful if anyone could provide us with any further details of where this ship has been?
