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| Four Spa Suites will join Seabourn Quest, followed by Odyssey and Sojourn. |
Luxury cruise lines are showing no signs of slowing down, beginning with Regent Seven Seas’ announcement of a new ship coming summer 2016.
The 738-guest Seven Seas Explorer is being built in Italy’s Fincantieri shipyard for approximately $450 million, making it the largest in Regent’s fleet and the most expensive luxury liner ever built. Architecture and interior design firms Tillberg Design AB, RTKL Associates and ICrave are designing the vessel’s 369 suites.
Crystal Cruises is allocating $17 million to redesign Crystal Serenity’s Crystal Penthouses and Lido Deck. Renovations to the Lido Deck will affect the ship’s Trident Grill, Tastes Restaurant and the Lido Café.
Design firm Adfecto will take charge of the Lido Deck, while the Crystal Penthouses will be updated by Toronto’s II BY IV Design. Crystal Serenity will enter a two-week drydock at the Navantia Shipyard in Cadiz, Spain, and will offer a 12-day Lisbon-Barcelona cruise on November 12 after the upgrades finish.
Seabourn is adding spa suites to three of its vessels, with the Seabourn Quest emerging from drydock as the first to complete the upgrade.
Accessed by a spiral staircase in the lobby of the ship’s spa, the new Serene Area and four new spa suites with private verandas also include a living and dining area, a separate bedroom, walk-in closet, floor-to-ceiling windows and a bathroom with a tub and spa shower.
The suites will also be added to the Seabourn Odyssey and Seabourn Sojourn during their next scheduled drydocks, with planned amenities including a large hydro pool and a holistic water-therapy based Kneipp Walk Pool.
In a service-based upgrade, Silversea Cruises launched a streaming service aboard its ships to provide on-demand movies and live TV news broadcasts aboard the line’s Silver Cloud. The service can be accessed by any device with a browser, including smartphones, laptops, tablets and e-book readers. More than 80 percent of the movies are available in five languages: English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
Silversea will provide access to international newspapers through the service in the future and will provide guests with a limited number of iPad Minis to access it. The service will be added to Silver Shadow, Silver Whisper, Silver Wind and Silver Galapagos by the end of the year.
Windstar Cruise named the first of its three new all-suite power yachts: the Star Pride, set to launch in May 2014, when it sails Europe throughout its first season. The three new identical ships have 106 suites and six passenger decks.