Senior Travels   /     Pioneer of Worldwide River Cruising for Senior Travel

We hear so much about the huge ocean going cruise ships but the somewhat more obscure form of cruising are in small cruise ships which have become really popular with people over 55 and for senior travel.  There are apparently a lot of reasons for that.  We had the chance to speak with a real pioneer of this smaller more intimate form of cruising.  Rudi Schreiner is a river cruise pioneer who founded the Ama Waterways European Fleet, a premier river cruise line on the Danube, Rhine, Main,  Mosel and Rhone rivers

This is the Transcription from our interview with Rudi.

Andy Asher: Now, you have all heard about cruising, we all hear about the celebrity cruise line Carnival Royal Caribbean. But there are some more obscure, small cruise ships which have become really popular with people over 55. There apparently a lot of reasons for that, so today we have a chance to speak with the real pioneer of this small, more intimate form of cruising. He’s Rudi Schreiner, river cruise pioneer, who founded the AmaWaterways European fleet. It’s a premier river cruise line that goes on rivers like the Danube, the Rhine, the Maine, the Moselle, Rome Rivers. So we picked up our conversation with Rudi where he explained that you’d pack and unpack just once.

Rudi Schreiner: And then you cruise for 7 nights or 40 nights to another city and then you fly home where you stay there for a few days. What it does, it gives you much more leisure time traveling on the river cruise than traveling on any other means of transportation because unlike  a train, or a car, because you go to bed in the evening and you wake up the next morning in the next town and you step off the ship and you’re in downtown. So you physically get almost double the leisure time than you would get in another way. Also, we provide a very luxurious environment geared to the North American market. Everything is included from the food onboard to other amenities. It’s a menu when you travel by different means, you have to purchase all these little items separately and it can get fairly costly to you.

Andy: Rudi I know those ocean cruise liners are just huge. They hold as many people as an entire city in some cases. But other than size, how would you distinguish the difference between them and a river cruise ship that you’re talking about?

Rudi: The main difference between the river cruise like in Europe and the ocean cruise is, really, the focus is on the destination not on the ship. So then you go on a river cruise in Europe, let’s say you are on the Daniel Cruise, you are from Budapest to Slovakia to Austria to Germany, the key elements are you want to experience really are the cities and you want to be traveling in a luxurious statement from place to place. When on an ocean cruise, the ship is filled in most cases with some of the focus of your destination. So especially on a super-large ocean cruise lines, their most activities are on the ship when you are including entertainment. And then you get off, you get off with 2 or 3 thousand people and you almost want to shopping mall. In Europe, you would dock in the center of the cities, you step off the ship and you’re in downtown. So the focus is really on the destination on the river cruise versus more the focus is the ship itself on the ocean cruise.

Andy: And what other differences are there between a river cruise ship and an ocean liner cruise ship that might interest senior travelers and people over 55.

Rudi: On a river cruise, you are traveling with 130, 140, 150 people. So you have actually, in our case, we have a main restaurant and a secondary restaurant whereas some of the larger ocean cruise you have 6, 7, 8, 10 restaurants. Entertainment in the evening, we bring local entertainers onboard in every destination whereas on big ocean ships, you have, in some cases, very big performances. So this is, it’s a similar environment maybe to even the smallest ocean cruise lines or expedition cruises where you have similar onboard experiences. So I mean we have luxurious state rooms, our new ships which state rooms of 220 square feet, you have balconies in most of the state rooms where you have twin balcony, regular balcony, and the French balcony. Our cuisine really competes with the top cruise lines when it comes to food quality. What we also do it’s a pretty much all-inclusive environment so you have all usual experiences included. We have wine, we have soft drinks, refreshments included. You can physically go on the cruise without spending extra money.

Andy: And yeah that was my next question, because I’ve heard while those ocean cruises can be very affordable, there are rumors that they nickel and dime you to death on all the other things but that’s not the case with the river cruises.

Rudi: That is not the case on the river cruise, yeah, for those are the prices and that is it. A river cruise today will stop somewhere in neighborhood of, if you go high season in neighborhood of Iran, $400 per diem per person and then you upgrade to a state rooms and that would take you up to $600 per day. So, whereas ocean cruises, you can find ocean cruises today for $700-$800 a week or so and then everything is extra onboard. But the average booking for a couple European cruise including air fare is closer to $10,000.

Andy: So tell a little bit, if you will, about the more recent rise in popularity of river cruising.

Rudi: River cruising started becoming slowly developing in the mid-90s and initially, the first ones who rented ocean cruises were people who have pretty much everything and they’re looking for new experiences and that was mostly the older age group. Now, retired people who have pretty much everything else who also have discretionary income, I would say upper middle class, and today it has changed because it has it is promoted really well on a really broad basis. It’s also today people are realizing that this is a fairly active environment. Our ships for example have bicycles onboard, free to use at anytime. On a 7-night cruise, we usually have two or sometimes three guided bicycle tours. In the cities in Europe, all the downtown sections are all closed for traffic so walking is essential to explore European cities. It is a fairly active environment. But what is changed also about the all the people actually look much more active than they were maybe 23 years ago. They are physically in better shape. So, prime age group on our river ships is still 55 plus, but you will find also more and more younger people in the 40s and so on. They go over there because one thing they have onboard is excellent Internet connection, we have entertainment system with computers in every station, we have Wi-Fi around the ship, all free in charge. And today, more and more people actually can travel because they still don’t want to disconnect from their home-base and from their office and they can do most of their work onboard.

Andy: So typically, how long is a typical river cruise?

Rudi: For the North American market, the majority of the cruises are 7-night cruises and with an additional, maybe, 3-nights hotel stay in a town. Like, for example, a 7-night cruise from Hungary up to Dane York and you go by motor couch, 3-hour connection to Prague, and then you spend 3 more days in France. That is a typical thing for the 10-12 days with a 7-night cruise. We also feature a lot of 40-night cruises to Budapest. I would say the ratio is probably 80% of night cruises, 20% 40-night cruises.

Andy: So back in 1990s, it sounds like is when river cruising really became much more feasible.

Rudi: Yes. What has happened actually what really kind of started this whole river cruise thing was the construction of the Main-Danube Canal in 1992. The canal was completed in September 1992 and it connects the Rhine river through the Main river to the Danube river which opened up a network of 3 thousand miles interconnected network of rivers. So you physically can go from the North Sea from Amsterdam through this heart of Europe across the continental divide and all the way to the Black Sea in a luxurious ship. In prior to that, you have short Rhine cruises and you have short Danube cruises, but with that canal, it really started developing better ships with ships which would cross over this canal and it really started a more and more luxurious market especially the last 5 years there was a huge development in the quality of the ships. They now always have hundreds of ships. Unfortunately, with the currently unstable political situation not too many people go there. In the early 1900s up to the second World War, Burma, Myanmar was extremely popular. There was an Irrawady river, there was 600 ships on the Irrawady river and with huge numbers of people traveling on the Irrawady. The whole fleet actually was destroyed on purpose before the Japanese invaded Burma in order not to give them facilities of transportation. And when they laid on with the whole political situation, Burma and the whole thing died. But that’s being on the rise again, so Burma is coming back. You have cruises on the Mei Kong, between the Vietnam and Cambodia, a fantastic destination. We have a lot of rivers in the world, but there are few rivers where you have interesting sites along the river. And what you have for example in the Mei Kong, on the one side you have the Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, you have in the middle of the cruise you have Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia – fantastic place to visit. And at the end, you have Siem Reap with Angkor Wat, the temples of Angkor and an incredible destination. It’s so – during that 7-night cruise, you really have three highlights and then you have a lot of smaller, interesting towns so there is a lot to see. I would say that the majority of travelers today don’t do only one thing; they take ocean cruises and they take river cruises. Yes, there is a trend today. There’s more and more interest in river cruising, but if you look at the physical numbers, take a crew a ship like the Oasis of the Seas with 6000 passengers in 52 weeks. That’s over 300,000 passengers yearly on one single ocean cruise ship. Between the 4 major river cruise companies in the US, we probably carry 354,000 passengers annually, so a little more than one big ocean cruise ship. The numbers are growing, but the capacity will not grow as fast as what’s happening in the ocean market.

Andy: Well Rudi, hopefully you’ve inspired a few people to look into taking your river cruises. How might they pursue it from here? Where do they go and how do they get more information?

Rudi: The best is to see your travel agent and ask your local travel agent about our both products about AmaWaterways. And then you can also call AmaWaterways, you can go online and find information at AmaWaterways.com. And then we’ll send you information out and generally advise you to work with a local travel agent because you might want to do some other arrangements besides just booking the cruise, so maybe different travel arrangements and so on. But that’s the way to go about it and you find pretty much all the information online about what a river cruise is about and that would be the best way to go about it.

Andy: Well I know you’ve been doing for a long time in one form or another, haven’t you?  You must have found this popular for senior travelers and people over 55.

Rudi: I started the river cruise in the 90s, then I opened up like new river cruises and then I started my own company under one of this. I have to say anybody who goes on a river cruise can expect a very, very enjoyable experience. It’s a highly, highly-satisfying educational experience because it’s such a leisurely way to travel. So I can highly-recommend trying it and then you’ll see why many people get hooked to river cruising once they’ve done one single cruise.

Andy: Well, sounds very attractive. Well, I wanna thank you for your time and it’s been very informative. Thanks, Rudi.

Rudi: Thank you Andy. Thank you very much.

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