Rendering of Crystal’s new river boats. * Crystal Cruises
Crystal Cruises has just announced a series of tweaks and revisions to its previously announced expansion plans. Currently, besides the line’s 1,070-passenger CRYSTAL SERENITY and 922-passenger CRYSTAL SYMPHONY, the line consists of the 62-passenger expedition-style ESPRIT, which debuted in the Seychelles in December 2015, and the 158-passenger CRYSTAL MOZART riverboat which debuted in Europe in July 2016.
The line still intends to build six new river boats (though has nixed plans to build two for French rivers), the first pair to debut in 2017: the 110-passenger CRYSTAL BACH and CRYSTAL MAHLER will cruise the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers, and boast 250-square-foot suites with walk-in closets. They will introduce two more river boats in 2018, and another pair at an unspecified date.
Crystal currently operates a 12-passenger private jet and says they are adding a Boeing 777 (and not a Boeing 787 Dreamliner as announced previously) for luxury air trips in 2017.
To join the ESPRIT, Crystal has plans for three new expedition ships (two more than previously announced) to start sailing the polar regions in 2019 (a year later than originally announced), 2020 and 2021, with the first to be called CRYSTAL ENDEAVOR.
Crystal has pushed back plans for the first of a new trio of 1,000-passenger luxury ship to 2022 (from an original target date of 2018).
Earlier this year, the Crystal also canceled its plans to revive the famed SS United States ocean liner, a beloved classic languishing and laid up in Philadelphia.
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It is hard to see how the original expansion plans Crystal Cruises announced can succeed financially. The river cruises and yachts may work out, however the 787 Dreamliner, and the restoration of the SS United States would have been huge financial investments that would be difficult to impossible to operate at a reasonable profit. As you can see these projects were canceled after much fanfare. To this add the three new polar-executive class ocean going vessels at 117K tons with just 1K passengers and 1K crew members-none of Crystal’s competitors offer anything close to this….for good reason, the cruise fares would be so high the result would likely be a higher than average vacancy rate, putting heavy pressure on profitability. First it was late 2018, then late 2019, now it is 2022 for the new 117K ton ships…the question now is will these ships ever be built as originally advertised? No business can expand simultaneously in all directions successfully, promising “Pie In The Sky”. The current Crystal management appears to be overestimating the market demand based on the top 1% of their existing clients. I hope I am wrong about this, but when a company over promises and under delivers they usually fail. It is always better to under promise and over deliver…let us see what Crystal does going forward. I wish them success in any event.