In Our Own Words

[HostDave]

February 24, 2012
By Tim Rubacky, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Development

We’re excited about the return of the American Queen to American river cruises and faithful readers of this blog have learned that we certainly like to talk about ourselves. At the Great American Steamboat Company, our favorite topic is the Great American Steamboat Company! Since offering authentic river cruises is our sole focus, I supposed one might expect us to be a bit self-centered. And this is the company blog, after all.

But all joking aside, the things that are difficult to convey through a blog or even our Facebook posts are the sense of dedication and the personality of those working behind the scenes. That’s why this week, I wanted to do something a bit different with the blog. First, I’d like to share a wonderful interview by TravelPulse with our Executive Culinary Director, Chef Regina Charboneau. We’ve written about her and her menus extensively and posted photographs of her hard at work but in the video below, you’ll get to hear her speak for herself and, like all of us, you’ll quickly get a sense of her charm, hospitality and incredible talents.

I’m also posting below an interview conducted by Travel Weekly with our Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Krida. As most of you know, Jeff was involved with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company during the design and construction of the American Queen in the 1990s so it is a labor of love for him to be able to bring his “baby” back to the rivers. And I think you’ll appreciate how he speaks frankly of the past and the prospects for the future.

Senior Editor Michelle Baran of the highly-respected publication Travel Weekly recently interviewed Jeff about the company, the background that has created a resurgence in river cruising and the circumstances that made it possible to restore the American Queen. Our thanks to Michelle and Travel Weekly for a terrific interview. A slightly edited version, shortened for the blog, is shown below.

TRAVEL WEEKLY: What happened in the lead-up to the demise of Majestic America Line?

JEFF KRIDA: It's easy to dissect what went wrong. It was probably harder to keep that from happening when people were in the middle of it. In the 1990s, the Delta Queen and the Mississippi Queen just focused on delivering a very high degree of service, not a lot of price discounting ... a really special, authentic, American historical vacation experience. And when it became very successful in the '90s and the company did a public stock offering, it provided a lot of money for the owners back then to go off on other ventures. They took their eye off the ball with the special uniqueness of the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen and then in 1995, when it was launched, the American Queen product.

And then later, when Majestic was the third owner, bought it after Delaware North failed with it, they just were inexperienced with the product, and they mixed it with a group of other products: Windstar Cruises, things that were not related. They thought of themselves as consumer-direct marketing geniuses and they turned their back on travel agent partnerships, and I think that hurt them big time.

TRAVEL WEEKLY: Why is the timing right to bring back the Mississippi River cruise market?

JEFF KRIDA: There are a couple of reasons. One of them is very simple: because it was available. Those of us who were involved with this business and product before, I think knew and understood where the potential was, where the pent-up demand was, not only from the profile of the customers who used to love to ride the boats and paid full fare to do so, but also from the travel agents who missed not having the product to sell. There were a lot of earnings left on the table for travel agents who used to make a good living selling this product in the 1990s.

TRAVEL WEEKLY: How will the market likely grow and evolve in the coming months and years?

JEFF KRIDA: I think there are a number of positive indicators about the future demand for heartland America river cruising. One of them is the explosive growth for more than a decade that Americans have been responding to and making happen in European river cruising. The old bus tour, "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," has been replaced by river cruising in a big way, and Americans love it. For the last three years they haven't been able to do it other than on the Columbia River in the United States. So I think there's a big introduction of well-traveled Americans to river cruising that translates very well into coming back home and learning about your own country's river cruising.

TRAVEL WEEKLY: What are your capacity options if you do decide to grow your business?

JEFF KRIDA: There are other rivers in America that river cruising can expand on. There are even still some other vessels that can be brought back into service, and there are newbuilds that can be done. So between the Columbia River, the Hudson River, more capacity on the Mississippi River…the more competitors that launch vessels on America's rivers, and bring attention to those destinations, the better.