Round the World Cruise

Cruise West has a really unusual cruise offering – travelling around the world in style. Sailing on 6th March 2010 from Singapore, the tiny (120 passenger) all suite accommodation Spirit of Oceanus is heading west, travelling ‘with the sun’ and will finish her round-trip voyage on 3rd February 2011.

During the voyage the cruise will call at 242 ports in 59 countries and six continents, visit 85 UNESCO World Heritage sites, cross 14 seas and oceans and transit four canals: Port Suez/ Port Said (Suez Canal transit); Corinth Canal/ Corinth (Mycenae/Nafplion); Kiel Canal, Germany; and the Colon/ Panama Canal. It’s a departure for the cruise line which has spent more than six decades focusing on small ship cruises to Alaska and Mexico. President and CEO Dietmar Wertanzl said the cruise is, in part, an attempt to find new ways to cruise in the recession, ‘Alaska is not really a repeat destination; you mostly cruise there only once. As a company, you can't just keep doing more of the same. There's too much capacity in Alaska. Alaska is who we are, but in this tough economy, we have to do something to stand out.’

This cruise certainly seems to offer something different, as it is focused on following ‘The Voyages of the Great Explorers’ and has port calls that relate to the travels of Columbus, Magellan, Leif Eriksson, James Cook and Marco Polo. It can also be taken on a segment basis of nine or ten night trips and apparently only a couple of people have signed up for the whole 11 month journey which costs around £125,000.