Quite recently, the first full-fledged cruise marathon of the motor ship "Prince Vladimir" in the Black Sea navigation of 2019 ended, as its shipowner and operator LLC "Black Sea Cruises" told about new items in the cruises for the next 2020 year.
The main and, it must be admitted, noteworthy changes are motivated by the availability and popularization of Black Sea cruises. Thus, if the previous three, in a sense, test seasons of Prince Vladimir navigation began either in May-June or closer to the end of summer, then the 2020 season starts on the first day of spring - March 1. Spring on the Black Sea coast and in Crimea is a fairly comfortable period for recreation, warm and sunny, with air temperatures, as a rule, from +20.
Now the geography of the ship's calls has been expanded: starting, as before, every Sunday in Sochi, in addition to the already traditional visits to Novorossiysk (with a visit to Abrau-Dyurso and Gelendzhik), Yalta and Sevastopol, once a month from now on, the Black Sea "round-the-world" will also include a call to Abkhazian Sukhum. Additional colors of an already interesting route, new points of attraction in Abkhazia - make the offers of week-long cruises even more attractive.
Pricing policy. Paradoxically for Russian tourism, standard prices for Black Sea cruises in 2020 remained not only at the same level, but also somewhere even slightly lower than for similar periods in 2019.
"Our entire route consists entirely of historical, cultural and natural points of attraction: Ai-Petri and Cape Fiolent, the delightful caves, parks and palaces of Crimea, Bakhchisarai and the Swallow's Nest, the "Old Park" in Kabardinka and the wine cellars of Abrau-Dyurso, the house-museums of our favorite classics near Yalta and a safari park for children," he emphasizes. General Director of the Black Sea Cruises company Viktor Glukhovshchenko.
At the same time, according to him, this is only a small part of all the interesting things on the route. "And I already personally know many of our tourists who are going on our liner for the 3rd or 4th time - precisely to collect the most complete collection of impressions of the unique route. And this certainly makes me happy. At the same time, I am sad that many of our fellow citizens, for example, are going to Turkey for the tenth time, not even suspecting the beauty and the mass of interesting, unique things to learn and discover in our country," notes Viktor Glukhovshchenko.
In his opinion, it is very important now to create a good and popular tourism product. “Which, by the way, is our cruise. But that’s one thing. It needs to be promoted, popularized, eventful and advertised in every possible way. Probably, only in that case we will be able to at least partially turn this multi-billion dollar flow, annually taken out by our tourists to Turkey and Egypt, to our domestic tourism infrastructure. I believe that this is a state task, and it awaits the same strong-willed and firm solution, as in the case of the appearance of our ship and the cruise line itself several years ago. And here, of course, we cannot do without the information support of the press and television. And, by the way, this concerns not only our cruises, but also many new interesting tourism projects in Russia, the existence of which the overwhelming majority does not even suspect! This is a real problem. My personal opinion: for those who promote the Russian tourism product, there should be some preferences in the media and on TV. “Otherwise, it’s a vicious circle,” the expert is sure.
And here it is worth recalling that in the fall of 2016, at the State Council in Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated the revival of the Crimean-Caucasian cruise line, popular during the Soviet era. The Ministry of Transport was instructed to urgently acquire a suitable vessel for this. The structural division of the Ministry of Transport, FSUE Rosmorport, was given operational management of the new ship and the development of the entire route of the upcoming cruises, for which purpose it established the management company OOO Black Sea Cruises.
"After the collapse of the USSR and the incomprehensible 90s, the entire infrastructure for the possible organization of a cruise line on the Black Sea fell into disrepair. Or simply - it outlived itself. And no business here would have independently raised this cruise topic - without support at the state level, without strong-willed and fundamentally new decisions, without considerable budgetary investments in the renovation of the ship, in the port infrastructure, in the ship repair base in Novorossiysk, and in the maintenance and servicing of the ship itself. In our case, the President's order gave a powerful impetus to the development of everything that is somehow connected with the revival of the cruise industry on the Black Sea," says Viktor Glukhovshchenko.
At the same time, according to him, attention to the project is riveted from absolutely all sides.
"We are checked and controlled in a high-demand mode. It is this strict control that keeps us on our toes. And so it should be! There is a rule: every 5 years, any vessel in the world must receive - after literally scanning the entire ship - all the permits for its operation in a special Register. And there are the strictest requirements. We got this "share" of confirmation in the Register precisely for the spring of this year. Everything was anew for us. It seemed easier to build a new ship, but we disassembled our entire "Prince Vladimir" screw by screw - lubricated, corrected, replaced, improved. It was a titanic work. But we went through this entire 2019 almost perfectly. This is the flip side of the beautiful-looking cruise business," concluded Viktor Glukhovshchenko.
At the moment, the Prince Vladimir is undergoing a planned renovation in the Novorossiysk dock, so that in just over two months, on the first day of spring, the new cruise season can begin.
Source: trn-news.ru