The highlight of any cruise is where the ship can take you. Why spend four days crossing an ocean in a floating theme park, when a smaller ship takes you to lands inaccessible by road or even air.
There’s a massive difference between cruises for explorers and the other 99% of cruise ships on the water. It doesn’t matter the facilities and amenities being advertised, when there are thousands of passengers it takes way too long to get on and off the boat.
Ready to Explore?
Cruises have over the top amenities because passengers don’t get off. Take Viking Cruises as an example. They added artificial snow rooms to their ships. How sad. And unsustainable. If you want snow, cruise to a place where nature provides the snow.
The best cruises take you to interesting locations and give you time to really explore. That’s why we prefer Ponant. Their six explorer ships are built for expeditions and only take around 200 guests (the world’s largest cruises have a capacity of over 6,500 passengers!)
You can swim or kayak straight from a Ponant boat. You can explore new territories, from the South Pacific to Scandinavia’s fjords and America’s Far North. We’ll be sharing our favourite itineraries in the coming weeks. But first…
A famous travel mantra says it’s all about the journey, not the destination. And while it’s nice to have restaurant cuisine by Alain Ducasse on your cruise, Ponant’s greatest onboard facility is their multi-sensory underwater lounges.
It’s a natural aquarium of sorts, as you sit in The Blue Eye lounge and watch the water. Better than that, you hear the underwater world as well, thanks to hydrophones built into the keel. It’s an immersive underwater experience, just without getting wet.
It illustrates a key difference in mindset to the mass market cruises. Typical cruises create an artificial world where the entertainment never changes, wherever you go. They want you to holiday in their manufactured world.
Ponant helps maximise your connection with the places you explore. You holiday to our planet’s most interesting corners instead. So ask your Elite Voyage travel designer for route inspiration and more details.
