Latest news with #Hurtigruten
Travel Weekly
3 days ago
- Travel Weekly
HX Expeditions' Spitsbergen is back in service after renovation
HX Expeditions' Spitsbergen has a new eatery and science center upon completion of the ship's refurbishment. The new informal dining space is called Brygga Bistro and serves snacks and light meals in the mid-morning, afternoon and late evening. It is on Deck 5 and offers table service. The science center is on Deck 6 and includes a lecture space, library, citizen science workstations and interactive screens. It also has interpreter systems for language accessibility. The Explorer Lounge and Bar received a refresh with new seating, and the bar now serves HX's 14 new cocktails. When HX Expeditions got new investors and separated from Hurtigruten, HX committed to renovating the Fram and Spitsbergen. Those renovated ships have new exterior colors. The Spitsbergen has a 220-guest capacity and is sailing the Arctic this summer.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Telegraph
Following in my grandparents' footsteps on a 130-year-old cruise
'To the people in the north of Norway, Hurtigruten has been everything. Transporting medicine, clothes, fresh fish, local people going to hospital' Gunnar, the captain of the Kong Harald, explained as we pass the Arctic Circle. I was on board the Coastal Express, the historic postal ship that has operated in Norway since 1893 – 132 years ago. Hurtigruten translates as 'fast route' in English, and the ship connects various coastal communities, with the voyage becoming more popular with tourists in recent decades. I asked him if he still considers it a ferry or a cruise, and he replied with a smile. 'Somewhere in-between. Years ago it would have been mainly local people taking short trips as they didn't have any other options, but now with cars and airports we need the tourists to keep the route running.' The ships still deliver cargo, and I was told that the most photographed thing on board was the forklift, which shifted the crates on and off the ship each time we stopped – 34 times, between Bergen to Kirkenes – although given the ethereal landscapes we passed, I took this fact with a pinch of salt. But I was aboard for more than just beautiful views. My grandparents chose to take the same journey in 1968 for their first overseas holiday, so this sailing was, for me, also a voyage into the past. My grandfather, a farmer and captain of the Home Guard, and my grandmother, a racehorse trainer and member of the Constantine shipping family, were both passionate lovers of the outdoors. They honeymooned on the Isle of Skye and took regular trips to Scotland, where my Grandad, a keen falconer, would spot birds of prey. They were drawn, inevitably, to Norway's wildlife and natural beauty – changing from the snowy scenes of the north to the green pastures on the approach to Bergen. I've always felt a sadness that I never had the opportunity to know my grandparents – as they had both passed by the time I turned five – and had clung to titbits of information about their interests and personalities in order to forge a connection with them. Despite having travelled to more than 90 countries, I'd not yet made it to Scandinavia, so discovering that I could take the very journey they once did felt like a way to bridge time, and build a sense of shared experience through our travels. Stops in port varied from 10 minutes to a couple of hours, and at Stokmarknes I disembarked at the Hurtigruten museum to see the fully preserved MS Finnmarken from 1956, very similar to the ship my grandparents would have sailed on. The main difference, I noted, was that the old ships had first- and second- class dining rooms and cabins, as well as a large post office and lounges for games. I saw old menus on display showing salted cod and salmon, and recalled my mother saying that my grandma had talked passionately about 'the fish platters' after their trip. The food on board the Kong Harald was a stand out for me, too, with meals including aqua-vit herring, piles of smoked salmon, and crab topped with trout roe. Head chef Roy has worked with Hurtigruten for 42 years and has seen the change over the decades from silver service to a more relaxed dining experience, without formal dress codes. Long careers with Hurtigruten seem commonplace, and the team are like family to one another, spending Christmases together and decorating cabins for passengers on board, many of whom travel the route regularly. Until the early 2000s, the majority of passengers were still Norwegians, though the 1960s saw an increase in foreign tourists, particularly from the UK and Germany. The uptick must have been sizable, as my grandparents coincidentally saw another couple from the same small village in North Yorkshire on their ship. The husband, presuming he wouldn't see anybody he knew, had chosen the opportunity to debut a new faux hairstyle. So the story goes, he was so embarrassed when he spotted my Grandad, that he threw the toupee overboard. He might have avoided the humiliation had he been on my sailing, as there was none of the enforced socialising you see on most cruises – just announcements as we passed significant places, which drew people away from the lounge and onto the top decks to mingle. The arctic circle crossing was celebrated with shots of cod liver oil and a toast with Havets Bobler – a sparkling wine aged under Norwegian waters – and as we sailed under the bridge over the Risøy channel, Norwegian flags were handed out for us to wave at passing traffic. I spent a lot of my time on the top deck, where passengers sit in a glass-windowed viewing area, where the only important decision to be made is which side to watch from. There's a Norwegian word – kos – which means sharing simple pleasures, and this lounge is the epitome of that. Passengers knitted, read books and simply watched the fjords roll by, their banks dotted with rust-red houses. With the exception of the digital cameras, you could imagine passengers 50 years ago enjoying the same simplicity. Even the excursions I joined – which, as I found out from a historic poster on the ship's bridge, have been running in some form for decades – are focused on timelessly Norwegian elements. A walk around Hammerfest – the self proclaimed 'northernmost city in the world', or a sea eagle-spotting boat trip near picturesque Trollfjord, are both experiences unlikely to have changed much at all in the past decades. As we headed back to the Kong Harald from Trollfjord – the sea eagles swooping down around us – the captain showed me his clicker had hit 75 sightings in just one day. Given my grandparents' interest in wildlife, I could easily picture them, half a century before, as awed by their surroundings as I was. Throughout the week, I'd been questioning Hurtigruten veterans about how the route had evolved since the 1960s, hoping to piece together what my grandparents might have seen and felt. But in doing so, I came to realise that it was the enduring similarities, not the changes, that left the deepest impression. Even in my lifetime, I've revisited places only to be disappointed by how time had reshaped them, but here it felt as though little might have changed at all. I'll be forever grateful to the Norwegian coastline, and to this little voyage, for giving me a moment of connection with the family members I never got to know, decades in the making. Essentials The Coastal Express has multiple sailings throughout the week, with northbound, southbound and return journeys from £1,354 per person. Tickets can be booked together with flights from London or Manchester.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Telegraph
The new regulations threatening Arctic cruises
When our waiter pointed through the restaurant window and exclaimed 'polar bear', I could swear the MS Spitsbergen listed, such was the rush to starboard. I was on a cruise up the coastline of western Svalbard, and we all wanted to see one. Yet this distant 'bear' sighting turned out to be a plump, white-coated reindeer – and the queue for omelettes soon reformed. How close we would actually get to one during Hurtigruten Expeditions' first 'Return of the Sun' voyage of the season, as winter's sea-ice cracked apart, was, however, another matter. That's because strict new conservation regulations governing how to see polar bears in Svalbard have just come into effect. The Norwegian government's new regulations mean ships cannot carry more than 200 passengers (we were 98), sites deemed fragile have been closed to landings, and there is firm guidance on not disturbing or pursuing polar bears. Which all seems sensible. What has caused some uproar is a diktat that between March 1 and June 30 (a period when females have young cubs) the closest distance a ship can view polar bears from is 500 metres. This drops to 300 metres for the rest of the year. One local Norwegian small-ship operator irately told me it would be the death of Svalbard cruising as even with powerful cameras and binoculars sightings would be too distant. He also showed me a recent video posted online of a scientific research helicopter harassing a polar bear with cubs. 'No cruise ship ever behaved so badly to the bears – it's a different rule for them,' he said. Still, I was optimistic – perhaps due to the serotonin overdose of midnight sun that blazed all night through my cabin window as we traversed a snowbound coastline of Toblerone-shaped mountains and glistening glaciers. Maybe I'd roll up my blackout blind to see a bear bobbing shipside on a piece of ice floe? Although if I did, the new regulations would require the ship to withdraw immediately to 500 metres away. Monica Votvik, the ship's Norwegian expedition leader, laughed: 'We don't tend to get those National Geographic encounters'. She was uncertain as to whether the regulation's rationale was conservation or to control tourism. 'I have been up around Svalbard for 15 years and had a lot of bear encounters and never once seen our operation disturb them. Mostly the bears are unbothered by our presence,' she added. Their population, she said, has been stable and last year's bears were fat with big bellies. Around 300 inhabit Svalbard, part of the Barents Sea population of 3,000, which roam across the ice eastwards to Russia's Franz Joseph Land. Since 1973 it has been illegal to hunt them here. An estimated 28,000 were killed during the century prior to the ban. Polar bears are not the sole focus of Svalbard voyages, Monica insisted. 'We don't call these wildlife cruises. It's about being in nature, among the glaciers and mountains,' she said. And she was right. During landings by zodiac dinghies we saw hauled-out walruses at Smeerenburg, squeezed together on a beach, some flat on their voluminous backs with ivory tusks pointing skywards. At Calypsobyen, the thwarted ambition is palpable of the abandoned workings of the British Northern Exploration Company's failed attempt at coal-mining between 1918-20. At Gravnesodden, the souls within the 17th-century graves of English, Dutch, and Basque whalers felt present in wavy murmurations of little auks overhead. One night a minke whale arched beyond the ship's bow. The perpetual soundtrack was barnacle geese migrating here in their thousands. Our polar bear moment arrived in the majestic snowbound Raudfjörden. At around 9pm, after a Norwegian seafood buffet, we crowded on Spitsbergen's bow when two bears had been spotted from the bridge. We edged closer, still well outside the new limit, but were halted by impenetrable ice, imprinted by a bear's heavy paw prints. I could make out the bears through binoculars virtually motionless staring at each other. They were pinpricks on the horizon, but this felt an authentically real way to experience their free-roaming lifestyles in the context of this immense Arctic wilderness. 'These distant sightings are the norm,' said Monica's assistant, Joshua van der Groen. 'If we saw them on the shoreline like this we would never land but previously would've launched the zodiacs to get closer whilst maintaining a respectful difference,' he said. The remote bear sighting however didn't worry fellow passengers, Ian and Jackie Ross, from Skye. 'We hadn't heard about the regulations before booking but they wouldn't have put us off,' they said. 'We didn't expect to see bears but came for nature and scenery. Any wildlife has been a bonus'. There is a suggestion that operators will sail beyond Svalbard's territorial waters, 12 miles out, to where the new regulations have no authority. It was in that zone, beyond 80°N, we saw one of Europe's most sublime spectacles: the southern edge of the polar ice front. Ahead of us was a white barrier that spanned the entire horizon. It was 600 nautical miles from there to the North Pole. Across its expanse polar bears can roam all the way to Russian islands. 'It will be interesting to see if ships do come here looking for bears, although you'd be very unlikely to see them due to the ice's extent,' said Joshua. Only early-season spring voyages are likely to sail to this ice-front because in summer it retreats. 'That would mean ships using a lot more fuel to reach it and more sea days, which would mean less landings, which guests enjoy,' he said. The biggest threat polar bears face is the retreat of Arctic sea ice – this winter's extent was the lowest on record – which undermines their ability to hunt seals on the ice floe. These new cruise regulations will therefore make little difference to wider efforts to conserve polar bears, but nor, thankfully, do they significantly diminish the experience of witnessing wild and magnificent Svalbard. Mark Stratton was a guest of Hurtigruten Expeditions. Its voyage costs from £5,540 per person including regional flights and hotel accommodation.
Travel Weekly
20-05-2025
- Business
- Travel Weekly
A sustainability premium is a tough sell -- but what about Gen Z?
Teri West When I explored the question of whether cruisers, particularly in the expedition and luxury market, would be willing to pay a sustainability-related premium, the answer I received was, essentially, "no." Cruise executives and advisors who specialize in these products told me that while customers may care about sustainability, the destination itself and the price are still their primary concerns. If one line was to charge an extra fee for sustainable efforts, it could lose customers to a competitor, they said. But that story may change in the decades to come, as younger generations mature, grow their wealth and start talking with their money. "I have a 19-year-old daughter who's my youngest one, and she has a complete different focus on environment and sustainability than I ever had at that age," Hurtigruten COO Gerry Larsson-Fedde told me. "And that's the generation that's coming. That's the generation that will be our guests in the future. And we really need to be prepared for that." Studies have for years documented the way Generation Z consumers think about the environment when they shop. Capital One reported in March that a little more than half of Gen Z shoppers are more likely to choose a product based on its sustainability than its brand name. The comparable rates for Gen X and Baby Boomers were 11% and 20%. When asked whether they would be willing to pay more for sustainable products, 73% of Gen Z respondents answered "yes" in a 2019 study conducted by consumer data analyst First Insight. That's a higher rate than any other generation; just 55% of Gen X respondents and 42% of Baby Boomers had the same answer. But that was six years ago, you say. Consider this: In the same study conducted two years later, the rate had continued to increase for every other generation -- but especially for Gen X, which surged to a 78% willingness to pay more. There is less data available about whether and how younger travelers prioritize sustainable travel, but what is available shows many are thinking about the Earth when taking trips. For example, half of the students surveyed for StudentUniverse's State of Student Travel in 2024 report said they prioritize booking with companies that have strong environmental credentials. Of course, the desire to prioritize the environment doesn't always align with how Gen Z shops in practice. Fast fashion, for example, is still popular; 72% of college students reported shopping a fast-fashion chain in a 2022, according to a report published by ThredUp. But fast-fashion products are also amongst the most affordable for building a wardrobe. In 10, 20 or 30 years, we could expect the wallets of those then-college students to be more robust and, perhaps, discerning. There is already a sector of people unwilling to cruise because of the industry's environmental impact, said Gari Senderoff polar travel specialist with Cruise Planners. "And let's face it," he told me, "Nobody really, absolutely needs to cruise. People need to fly, but no, this is a luxury that nobody really needs." If upcoming generations continue to prioritize lowering their environmental impact, the industry could lose out on more customers who choose to put the environment first. Or it could work proactively. "You can't start in 20 years," Larsson-Fedde said. "We need to start now."
Trade Arabia
20-05-2025
- Business
- Trade Arabia
Hurtigruten, CruiseXplore to strengthen Mideast presence
CruiseXplore has been officially appointed as the exclusive Middle East representative for Hurtigruten, the renowned Norwegian cruise line with over 130 years of experience sailing the iconic Norwegian coastline. This strategic partnership brings together CruiseXplore's deep-rooted expertise in the Middle East cruise market with Hurtigruten's legendary Coastal Express voyages and premium Signature Line sailings. With a fleet of small, intimately scaled ships operated by expert crews, Hurtigruten offers an authentic and immersive travel experience to some of the most remote and awe-inspiring parts of the Norwegian coast. Together, CruiseXplore and Hurtigruten aim to meet the growing demand in the Middle East for transformative, experience-rich travel to Norway and the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard—offering exceptional value without compromising on quality. Carla Hines, Head of Sales for EMEA at Hurtigruten, said: 'We're thrilled to partner with CruiseXplore to expand Hurtigruten's presence in the Middle East. Their in-depth knowledge of the region, strong industry relationships, and commitment to delivering exceptional service make them the ideal partner for our growth in this dynamic and fast-evolving market. The Middle East presents an exciting opportunity for us to connect more travellers with the natural wonders of Norway – from its dramatic fjords to its rich coastal heritage. Through this collaboration, we look forward to welcoming more guests from the region aboard our voyages and sharing the magic of Norway with a new audience.' Lakshmi Durai, Chief Executive Officer of CruiseXplore, added: 'We are delighted to see the pace at which the demand for destination-focused experiential cruising has been growing year on year. Hurtigruten's expertise in offering authentic voyages with high-quality services and products that are truly Norwegian appeals greatly to this region. The Middle Eastern guests always look for visiting different destinations by engaging with their history, people, culture, and food. Hurtigruten offers the perfect and sought-after cruise for our guests.' 'With Hurtigruten, our guests will get to see the breathtaking Northern Lights closely in the sky just above them while standing on the top deck of the ship. Watching this magical and natural wonder, called Aurora Borealis, from the ship is an exciting experience not to be missed.'
