Cruise news

Today's Miami Herald...

Carnival plans to cut cruise fares
Carnival hopes to stimulate demand by cutting prices for its Caribbean cruises.

BY AMY MARTINEZ

Concerns about hurricanes and rising prices at the gas pump apparently are keeping many Americans from booking Caribbean cruise vacations. But they may be persuaded to push those concerns aside.

Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise ship operator, said Tuesday it's lowering fares for its Caribbean itineraries in hopes of making them forget about last year's unusually active hurricane season and the dent that gas prices are making in their wallets. Namesake brand Carnival Cruise Lines said rates for Caribbean cruises aboard 16 of its ships are down as much as 20 percent from a year ago -- with some week-long itineraries selling for $449.

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Okay, maybe it's a sale. Or, maybe it's just competition is heating up as the market hits a ceiling. Our own Viviane Oliveira was asking those questions months ago, in time for our June edition.

New Horizons

Small cruise lines get innovative to take market share from the heavyweights across the region.

Cruise lines are one of the hottest segments in the tourism industry. They moved 11 million passengers last year, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. In 1980, just 1.5 million people took a cruise. The industry expects growth to continue with no end in sight. With so many people stepping aboard, the market is not just a paradise for the big cruise lines—more and more of the little guys are moving in.

Richard Jansen, senior vice president at DVB Bank, a Frankfurt financial institution that caters to the transportation industry, says 40 smaller cruise lines and a few mid-sized companies generate US$6 billion a year in sales, just shy of a third of the $20 billion-a-year market. “This number leads to an interesting conclusion in that, the general statement that about 80% of the cruise market is controlled by Carnival, RCI, Star/NCl and MSC Cruises, thus actually is more like 70%,” Jansen said in a written statement.

Small cruise lines have decided to fight the big lines for their market share. To do that, investors are searching for market niches abandoned by the big outfits, and in the process, they have sparked a revolution.

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All your rafting news fit to print

NYT today...

In Remote Chile, a Paradise Carved by White Water

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

The white-water outfitter Eric Hertz spent a lifetime searching for the perfect river. In 1990, he finally found it, in Patagonia. Intrepid kayakers who had ventured into southern Chile the previous year said that the Futaleufú River could not be rafted. But Hertz and his partner, the Chilean white-water expert Roberto Currie, made an expeditionary first descent in 1993 and figured out how to safely navigate what today is the most intensive stretch of commercially rafted white-water rapids in the world.

Latin Trade Chile Correspondent Eduardo Coronado, October 2005

Wild Ride

Futaleufú means "wild river'' in Mapuche, the language of Chile's indigenous people. There couldn't be a more appropriate name for its powerful, crystalline waters, which run along the northern frontier of Patagonia, more than 1,000 kilometers to the south of Chile's capital city Santiago.

The river's waters, classified as Category V or VI for white-water rafting, carve a uniquely beautiful valley through the heart of the Andes, creating a paradise for adventure tourism fanatics. The town of Futaleufú is home to 1,826 people who in the rafting season - from November to March - share their town with 5,000 tourists on an adrenaline rush in a place that doesn't even have its own gas station.

"In Patagonia there is no pollution or industry, the water and air are pure, and there are very few people. Nature dominates,'' says Chris Spelius, a one-time member of the U.S. Olympic kayaking team who fell in love with the valley after traversing the river for the first time in 1985. Spelius's view, an apparently common one, is that Futaleufú is the most difficult river in the world where ordinary people can pay to ride the rapids. "It's dangerous even if you use all the appropriate security procedures,'' he says.