Amsterdam bound this weekend.

I am lucky enough to be spending this coming weekend in Amsterdam…one of my favourite cities and not only that I will be attending the CLIA & Ireland River Cruise convention.

I am very excited to say the least and can’t wait to get some first hand experience of River cruising. I have been on lots of ocean cruises over the years but as yet I have never stepped on board a River cruise ship.

The CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) convention will be host to around 300 delegates and I am very proud to be one of them.  Events like this are so valuable, they give us the chance to visit a number of different River ships, from different River cruise lines. This year there will be 6 ships for us to visit from companies such as AmaWaterways, A-Rosa and Uniworld. There are 15 river cruise companies who are part of CLIA and names that as yet I am not familiar with. This weekend will give me the opportunity to learn so much about the world of River cruising and the different styles of ships that are available to my customers.

I’m really looking forward to our Amsterdam canal cruise on the first day and spending the night on board the Emerald ‘Star’. The ship I will spend the second night on is still to be confirmed…I can’t wait to find out!

I was reading some really interesting figures….did you know that there are 260 river cruise boats that sailing in Europe at the moment with plans to increase this with a further 24! That’s a lot of ships and it proves just how popular river cruising is becoming.  It also seems that River cruising is growing fast here in the UK with almost 110,000 British passengers enjoying a river cruise experience last year…a huge 22% increase on the year before.

Feedback from my customers who have taken River cruises is always excellent and I find that those customers who have cruised for many years on the larger Ocean cruises switch to River cruising for something different…new destinations, the river cruise experience, the excellent shore excursions. River cruise ships usually hold less than 200 passengers so the experience is so different….imagine 200 passengers on board a river cruise compared to over 3000 on a huge ocean cruise ship..a huge contrast!

I will be away on the convention until Monday  and of course as soon as I get home there will be lots of photos for you to see and you will be able to hear all about my River cruise convention experience..I can’t wait to share it with you.

Abbi