"New" Addition SIRENA on the way 2016

[hypercafe]

Everybody is different. South America is a wonderful continent with great natural and cultural treasures. The way I understand it, NCL's plans are not about North Americans, they are about the increasing number of well-to-do Brazilians who might be interested to cruise right from their country. Sirena is a great name for that market.

 

In fact NCL has put a Brazilian restaurant on all their ships which is very good, nice to see it on the new Oceania ship.

 

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[StanandJim]

I seem to recall that Carnival tried a similar Latin American themed venture, Fiesta Marina, in the early 1990's, which went bust rather quickly and again in 2007 ,Ibero Cruceros, this time with a more Euro-Latin bent.

 

As of November of 2014, Carnival announced the brand would be discontinued and that Costa would absorb Ibero Cruises and all its' assets by the end of the year.

 

The third time may be the charm and I wish Norwegian all of the luck in the World.

I just hope that they did their market research!!!

Edited February 1, 2015 by StanandJim

[Floridiana]

It depends on the Brazilian economy, doesn't it?

[Mura]

This talk is reminding me of our Jan '02 cruise on NCL's DREAM (no longer in the fleet) from BA to Valpo.

 

We had booked one whole month before the cruise because we got an offer of a great deal. We'd been booked on a Renaissance cruise for the same time frame, but when 9/11 happened AND Ren went bust, we weren't interested in replacing the cruise. But then Amex made us an offer we couldn't refuse.

 

It turned out that there were many South Americans on this cruise. Apparently (the way I heard it), NCL wanted to fill the ship and so they went to the locals to do so. This was soon after 9/11 and many of us in the U.S. weren't interested in cruising. We personally weren't frightened (even though we are New Yorkers) but we also weren't planning on cruising soon .. until we got the great offer. But I would assume that was a good reason why the ship was so empty a month before departure date.

 

At the boat drill it was clear that the crew member in our section didn't speak Spanish. One of the South American passengers said, "You ARE in South America." How right she was! Had we had an emergency there could have been a serious problem with so many Spanish speaking passengers and so few Spanish speaking crew members.

 

It was my perception that NCL just hadn't been able to plan that far ahead given the circumstances of 9/11 and an empty ship with a South American itinerary.

 

They had plenty of Asian crew on board ... but they didn't speak Spanish either.

 

Mura

[Floridiana]

They have to prepare better if they want to break into a Portuguese speaking market. Our cruise on HAL last year had a similar language problem. Argentina to Chile, from one Spanish speaking country to another and quite a number of Argentinians on board. Not a single announcement in Spanish, some elderly first time cruisers from Argentina were quite lost. After a few days, the ship let a Spanish speaking staff member make some announcements. I think HAL missed an opportunity to make this group of passengers feel welcome.

[Mura]

If cruise lines want to attract people from other countries, with other languages, they need to plan ahead. It's important to have announcements at the very least being made in the language of those passengers. And this is not only for emergency situations but for general information.

 

(The same does apply to European cruise lines (whether sea ships or river boats) that want to attract English speaking passengers.)

 

But this shouldn't be rocket science!

 

I remember checking into a Hamburg hotel about 10 years ago and I spoke German to the clerk. (Having carefully planned my speech beforehand, of course.)

 

She looked at my passport and said, "You can't be an American, you speak German." I was very embarrassed for my compatriots ... but it is true that most of us only speak American English.

 

And that can be a problem when you are in areas where the locals have learned BRITISH English.

 

Mura

[kuldalai]

For operations in South American waters aimed at locals the staff need to be able to converse both in Spanish and Portugese.

[rallydave]

While I completely understand the need to speak the language of the country a cruiseline is marketing to, sometimes this language issue can become so arduous and time consuming that nobody listens and the message never gets across to everyone.

 

Remember over 30 years ago we took a cruise on Sitmar (no longer in existence) taken over eventually by Princess and every announcement was done in what seemed to be 10 languages. This included muster which seemed to take hours. Remember people talking, complaining, and not listening after the first few announcements and doubt if there were people who only spoke the many later languages any of those people could hear their announcement or were very interested in hearing them after so many times the words were spoken.

 

Again, the need to cater to all of the passengers including non-English speakers is important but, some thought into the number of languages needs to be considered in the need to keep everyone informed and safe.

[Toranut97]

If cruise lines want to attract people from other countries, with other languages, they need to plan ahead. It's important to have announcements at the very least being made in the language of those passengers. And this is not only for emergency situations but for general information.

 

(The same does apply to European cruise lines (whether sea ships or river boats) that want to attract English speaking passengers.)

 

But this shouldn't be rocket science!

 

I remember checking into a Hamburg hotel about 10 years ago and I spoke German to the clerk. (Having carefully planned my speech beforehand, of course.)

 

She looked at my passport and said, "You can't be an American, you speak German." I was very embarrassed for my compatriots ... but it is true that most of us only speak American English.

 

And that can be a problem when you are in areas where the locals have learned BRITISH English.

 

Mura

 

One of my DH's favorite corny jokes:

 

Q: What do you call a person who speaks many languages? A: Multilingual

Q: What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? A: Bilingual

Q: What do you call a person who speaks only one language? A: American

 

Donna

(Who can still cobble together a conversation in Japanese, so I guess I pass.)