Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Conference at Sea



October is the time of the year for our annual CruiseOne sales conference. This year the convention was held aboard the Norwegian Cruise Lines beautiful Pearl for a 5night cruise to Cozumel, Mexico and Grand Cayman. The Pearl is a 93,530 ton ship designed for Freestyle Cruising with innovative amenities such as a four lane bowling alley, rock climbing wall and two very Deluxe Owners Suites each measuring over 535 sq, ft. with commanding views of the ship and the surrounding scenery.

The Pearl was built for truly free style dining that features anytime dining in 10 unique restaurants, 3 of which have an additional charge. They are Cagney’s Steak House, Blue Lagoon, and LeBistro. The free style no charge restaurants are the Summer Palace, Indigo, Lotus Garden, Mambo’s/Latin Tapas Restaurant, La Cucina Italian Restaurant and The Garden Café. We ate in Cagney’s Steak House and the tuna was spectacular, I definitely would suggest a meal at this restaurant. We also dined at the La Cucina Italian Restaurant and the seafood marinara sauce was outstanding with lots of shrimp, mussels and calamari. We enjoyed more traditional dining in the Indigo, great lamb chops were served the night we ate there, and the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is a more dress up restaurant, no jeans are allowed. The Garden Café offered a wide selection of entrees and side dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food was very well presented and always looked fresh and was tasty. A big hit was the ice cream counter that served free ice cream all day and offered a wide selections of flavors

Entertainment is a great part of cruising and NCL has some of the best. They feature the Jane Ryan dancers who always put on a fabulous show. Norwegian also offers the Second City Troupe for comedy and they offer several show during the cruise.

Our first stop was Cozumel and I marveled at the improvements in this port over the years. We berthed downtown and as you walked off the pier you were close to the shopping and also near Carlos and Charlies, a hang out for many cruise passengers. The stores were very modern and offered a lot of good merchandise. We did some shopping for Christmas ornaments, didn't find any, guess we were too early.

Our next stop was Grand Cayman and as usual we had to tender into the port. With the large tenders the lines were very short and we arrived on the island very easily. This is another island that has seen many improvements over the years. They are still upgrading some of the side streets and when completed, it will be a great place to visit and shop. We were successful and found the Christmas ornaments we were looking for. Both Grand Cayman and Cozumel offer some of the best beaches for swimming and snorkeling.

Attending a conference on a ship is the way to go. The facilities and meeting rooms on the Pearl have all the audio visual equipment needed to put on a first class conference. CruiseOne had over 400 attendees on the ship and they were able to accommodate this large group for their meetings. There were several smaller meeting rooms for the break out meetings.

The classes we attended covered such topics as Luxury Cruising, Blogging, and destination cruises in the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand. Executives from all the major cruise lines gave presentation covering all their ships and destinations they sail. Each cruise line has several new ships entering their fleet over the next several years. It was interesting to note that from now till 2011 there will be 39 new ships entering into service with an additional 78,000 plus new berths. It was reported at this conference that approximately 15% of the U.S. population has taken a cruise. The addition of all these new ships will open up some new and exciting ports all over the world for passengers to visit.


The annual conference is when the sales awards for the past year are presented. We were fortunate to recive an achievement award for our cruise sales over the past year.



For more information on a meeting or conference at sea call Bill and Joan Aselage at CruiseOne, 904-278-1105 or toll free at 877-365-3159. Visit our web site at www.cruiseone.com/jaselage or e-mail us at jaselage@cruiseone.com

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