Tom Burke’s Blog

I’m not the only person to think that P&O have got the prices for Azura (coming into service in April 2010) wrong – they’re way, way too high. (I blogged about this before.) Looking at the current (2010/Mar 2011) P&O brochure, prices for Azura seem to be around £150 per person per night (pppn), whereas Ventura, a virtually identical ship, is coming in at about £125pppn. That £25 pppn extra amounts to £350 per person over 14 nights, £700 for two, which is a significant amount of money, especially as the actual cruise experience will be very similar on the two ships.

Of course P&O often seem to charge high prices. Next year, however, they will be under some pressure. Celebrity’s Eclipse (the third of the Solstice class) will be based in Southampton, doing a mix of cruises pretty similar to the standard P&O fare: 14 night cruises to the Baltic & western Med, 16 nights to the central Med, and 11 nights to the Canaries; and prices on Eclipse, at least at the beginning of the season, aren’t far above £100 pppn for a balcony cabin. Up at P&O price level there will two Cunard ships, Queens Victoria & Elizabeth, and I’ve heard a lot of people say that if they’re going to spend that much money they’d rather do it with Cunard than P&O.

It’s beginning to look as if this pressure is telling. I received a sales leaflet through the post today from Ideal Cruising, through whom we’ve booked several times already. This leaflet is all about Azura in 2010, and it shows some significant reductions. Balcony cabin prices are quoted as £1899 for 14 nights in the spring as against £2499 in the brochure; 16 nights in the central Med in the high season is £2269 as against a brochure price of £2899. So perhaps Azura’s inaugural season isn’t selling as well as P&O would have liked.

I received the Azura brochure from P&O this morning.

The itineraries are not what I was expecting. There are no 14-night western Mediterranean cruises (surely, P&O’s bread & butter?); instead, all seven Med cruises are 16-nighters to the eastern Med (Venice). There are also some 14-night cruises to the Baltic, some 11 and 12-night cruises to the Canaries, and a few shorter cruises. I wonder if these itineraries are intended to dissuade families from choosing her? Azura does have family facilities but (as I’ve posted before) they aren’t marketing them especially strongly. 16 night cruises are unattractive to families because they are more expensive, of course, and also because they tend to not fit well with family holiday schedules. I also see that none of Azura’s cruises begin on a bank holiday weekend; again, cruises that begin on a bank holiday, especially 7-night cruises, are attractive to families, and Azura doesn’t have any of these.

I’ve also looked at the prices. I’m still working through it all, but it’s clear that they are high. Part of this is due to the longer cruises, of course, but that’s not the whole story. P&O seem to be looking for about £150 per person per night for a balcony cabin, which is a lot. This is markedly higher than the prices for Ventura’s first season in 2008: compare the price for A010 on Azura with that N811 on Ventura (both of these are/were 16 night E Mediterranean cruises in high season, so are quite comparable). Balconies started at £2249 for the Ventura cruise, while for the Azura cruise the start price is £2619 (after deducting the ‘early bird saving’). That’s a difference of almost £400 per person, call it £750 for a couple – total cruise price would be £4,500 on Ventura, £5,250 on Azura – that’s a significant difference, more than 15% more.

My conclusion is that I don’t think we will be cruising on Azura in 2010. I’m also starting to worry about the prices P&O will be charging for the rest of the fleet. The general brochure (which will contain these prices) should be published in early April or thereabouts.

In the meantime I’m still looking at those Celebrity prices for 2010: around £1400 per person for 14 nights from Southampton to the western Mediterranean on Celebrity Eclipse, or a bit more, including flights, for 12 nights from Barcelona to Venice (or vice-versa). These look to be much more attractive deals than what we currently know about P&Os plans for 2010. I await the rest of P&O’s 2010 details with interest.

It’s the middle of March, and the cruise lines have begun announcing their itineraries and prices for – 2010! First off the mark (I think) is Celebrity, who published their summer 2010 European brochure (at least, the on-line version) about a week ago. I gather that P&O will announce 2010 itineraries & prices for Azura in about a week’s time, and the rest of the fleet sometime in early April. nd Fred.Olsen have got a printed Preview brochure out, and are taking bookings from the 18th.

Let’s go back to Celebrity. By summer next year they will have three Solstice-class ships in service and all three will be in Europe. The newest of them, Celebrity Eclipse, will be delivered from the Italian shipyard in spring next year, and will spend her first season cruising out of Southampton. These will mainly be 14-night cruises to the Baltic and western Mediterranean, with the occasional longer (eastern Med.) and shorter cruise (Iberia mini-cruise) thrown in. In other words, exactly the sort of cruises that Azura and the rest of the P&O fleet will be doing.

Price-wise, Celebrity have laid down a tough target for P&O to match. Their brochure prices aren’t uncompetitive but at the moment they are reducing all prices by up to £200 per person. Plus there’ll be free car-parking at Southampton for all bookings made this year. Thanks to these offers my usual on-line TA, Ideal Cruising, have quoted me a price of under £1400 for a 14-night western Med cruise in September, for a balcony cabin on either deck 7 or 8.

I’m looking forward to seeing what prices P&O will be publishing in a few weeks.

A quick update on a couple of P&O issues.

First, Azura. During a conversation with my usual on-line travel agent yesterday I was told that Azura’s summer 2010/winter 2011 cruises will go on sale on 30 March, and that details of them (itineraries, dates, prices) plus further information about the ship will be available around 20 March. There’s no other information available yet, except that there is going to be a ‘big push’ on Azura during this period. Itinerary details for the rest of the P&O fleet won’t be available until after 30 March, and bookings for the other ships won’t open until the latter part of April.

Secondly, Aurora. Currently on her world cruise, I gather she is having problems with engine (or shaft) bearings: she has had to reduce speed to 13 knots and her itinerary is under threat. The good news is that it seems the relevant spare parts are on board, and a that a team of fitters from the supplier is traveling to Auckland to meet her there and do the necessary work. Hopefully she will be able to continue on her cruise after that, although her schedule may need to be adjusted. She’s supposed to be at Wellington on 5 March and Napier on the 6th (both of these in New Zealand, of course) but I gather she’s presently making straight for Auckland where there are suitable facilities for the repair. How long she’ll stay at Auckland isn’t clear yet, but that’s not a bad place to be delayed (as long as it’s only a delay, of course).

On Saturday I received a booklet from P&O giving more details about their under-construction ship, Azura. She’s physically a sister to Ventura, and therefore also Emerald Princess and Ruby Princess (as well being a very close cousin to the rest of the Grand Princess class). P&O have a website here, but that’s all the information they’ve given so far. The booklet I received on Saturday filled in some of the blanks but not all of them – still no detailed deck plans, for example.

Although she’s going to be physically very nearly the same as Ventura it seems likely that P&O are going to market her differently.  The almost complete absence of the word ‘family’ from the booklet is noticeable, for example. I spotted two mentions: one in the section about the SeaScreen (aka ‘Movies under the Stars)’, where the phrase ‘family favourites under the sun’ was used; and again in the epilogue, where the phrase ‘multi-generational families’ was included in a list of groups to whom Azura will appeal. In fact, in chapter 6, there’s a mention of “a select number of multi-occupancy staterooms… sleeping 4-6 people” – I thought it was significant that these were specifically not described as ‘family cabins’. And there is absolutely no mention of children’s facilities. This is contrast to the marketing of Ventura, where the provision of family facilities is given a strong mention. Azura, it seems, is not being marketed to families (although there will be family facilities on board). Another hint of the direction for Azura will be the provision of (some) single-occupancy cabins, a first for P&O.

Let me go back to that comment in the booklet epilogue. This is it in full: “Her appeal will be far-reaching, from couples to singles and from groups of friends to multi-generational families, but the experiences she will offer will always be stylish, sophisticated and wonderfully serene.”. I think it sums up where P&O are intending to position Azura.

We’re told that an Azura brochure will be available in March. I’m increasingly attracted to Azura so I’m looking forward to mine.

P&O have released details of their next ship, Azura, construction of which recently started. She’s a sister to Ventura (and therefore a very close relation to recent Princess ships, e.g. Ruby Princess) but will be somewhat different from the earlier P&O ship. Whereas Ventura was aimed very much at first-time UK cruisers, and especially families, Azura will be mainly geared to adults and couples, and will offer “high quality service in a contemporary embience”, according to Nigel Esdale, P&O’s managing director. He also said the the new ship will “go back to the core of P&O’s Britishness”.

The highlights of the design are the provision (for the first time on P&O) of some single cabins, and also an adult-only sun-deck to be called The Retreat. I suspect this will be very similar to Princess’ ‘Sanctuary’. Another idea taken from Princess is Movies under the Stars – MutS.

Beyond those aspects it seems that the features of Azura will be quite similar to those on Ventura: the numbers and locations of bars, restaurants and lounges will be almost the same as on Ventura, although the details will differ. Gone is East, Ventura’s ‘Asian Fusion’ speciality restaurant, to be replaced by Sindhu, a British-Indian fusion restaurant. Gone also is the White Room, probably replaced by a restaurant to be called Bentleys (one or two of the names could still be changed). One thing that is interesting is that none of the restaurants are to be named after chefs – have P&O found that the names of Gary Rhodes and Marco Pierre White don’t have the pull that was expected?

Azura will be under construction for almost another 18 months, so many details could change. But I’m interested and excited by this ship. We enjoyed our cruise on Ventura, and we hope to cruise on either Ventura or Azura in spring/early summer 2010.