Branson announced that Virgin Cruises aim commence the first itinerary in 2020 with initially 1 cruise ship and 2 more by the year 2022. The base of Virgin Cruises will undoubtedly be in Miami, Florida.
The interesting thing here will be the fact despite the location of the base the company itself "Virgin Cruises" will be British-owned; forming a subsidiary of the London-based Virgin Group.
In terms of itineraries Virgin Cruise desire to operate round-trip Cruise in the Caribbean out of Miami, targeting mainly the North American market.
There are still many questions to answer about this new Cruise Line which Sir Richard Branson has vowed to “shake things up” in the industry". So what does he actually mean? Here are some thoughts from Off Radar:
Power of the Virgin brand
- Virgin Money, Virgin Holidays, Virgin Hotels, Virgin Vacations, Virgin Vouchers, and many other Virgin brands can all be leveraged to sell and promote Virgin Cruises.
- In particular Virgin can generate synergies with its air and travel brands to offer competitive and interesting fly-cruise deals.
- Cruise and stay and stay and cruise packages can be created also using the Virgin Hotels and Virgin Holidays brands.
- Virgin Money banking services will empower the Virgin Cruises to create a brand Eco-system when it comes to payment concerning on-board spending.
- This can also be integrated to the Virgin Money customer accounts, creating both convenience and greater brand loyalty.
- The Virgin brand will be consistent through the entire vacation experience in a way that no other Cruise Line can achieve this right now.
- The are almost unlimited connections ans synergies between all of the Virgin brands and they have the time to plan.
- Like TUI Cruises and Thomson Cruises, one of the greatest assets of Virgin Cruises is its experience in travel and ability to package a cruise.
- Virgin Atlantic is one of the largest private airlines in Europe, while its subsidiary Virgin America is fast-becoming the best airline covering numerous key routes in the United States.
- Virgin Cruises is likely to offer cruise and fly deals using its sister brands that even the Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean will find it challenging to compete with.
- We also envisage that Virgin Cruises possess the capability to respond quickly to trends, changes in the market thereby re-structuring fly-cruise deals efficiently to respond.
- This is only possible for companies that own Cruise and Airlines and a clear price advantage can be secured.
Virgin Entertainment, Media & Shopping
- When it comes to Entertainment, Virgin has a clear advantage over all other Cruise Lines apart from perhaps Disney.
- Virgin Group owns Mega-stores with 100 outlets across Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE & Saudi Arabia.
- No doubt a Virgin Mega-store will be on board and there will be no shortage of stock.
- Virgin Radio broadcasts through local franchises in Canada, UAE, France, Italy, Lebanon, Thailand and Turkey.
- Virgin Cruises is naturally going to take advantage of this strength in entertainment to provide more innovative music at sea, as well as partnerships with high-profile celebrities and pop stars that other cruise lines have been unable to secure.
