It’s been one year since AmaWaterways established its office in Australia, with the river cruise line hitting the growth targets it put in place 12 months ago after an admittedly slow start, Co-Owner Greg Murphy has revealed.
The growing team, which is headed up by Managing Director Steve Richards, is celebrating the milestone this week with Murphy in attendance.
Speaking with LATTE at the Virtuoso ANZ Forum in Perth last week, Murphy shared that the decision to expand into Australia came after careful thought. The company had previously had a long-standing relationship with local partner APT, but the move represented a “natural progression”.Subscribe to LATTE Cruise’s free eNewsletter to keep up to date with everything in the luxury cruise space.“We both had different ideas,” Murphy said. “They wanted to build more product, we wanted more access to the market.”
This strategic decision has paid off, with a strong response from the market building over the past year after what Murphy described as a slow start.
“As we move through the year, every week the business is getting better,” he told the Forum. “It’s great to see where the company is going. We have more business on the books out of Australia and New Zealand for travel this year, than we did out of North America in our first year as a preferred supplier with Virtuoso.”
The local team has also surpassed the initial growth targets set for their first year, Murphy confirmed. “We threw a dart at a number on a dartboard, and we surpassed that number,” he quipped, attributing the result to the region’s enthusiasm for travel, particularly river cruises. “Everyone’s crazy for river cruises,” he said.
Investing in the right people has also been crucially important, along with AmaWaterways’ distinct offering. Murphy highlighted six included shore excursions in each port, and “wonderful locally sourced food” as key differentiators. The cruise line has also eliminated all single use plastics, with the plastic key cards now a thing of the past.
With demand high, the company is now working to grow its fleet. “We need more inventory,” Murphy said. Fortunately, more is coming, with a new Mekong ship, AmaMaya, a new Douro ship, the AmaSintra and another, AmaSofia to operate a range of itineraries on the Rhine and Danube. A sister ship for double-width AmaMagna is also scheduled for 2027.
This month will also see the launch of AmaWaterways Colombia operations, to be operated by two new ships AmaMagdalena and AmaMelodia. Murphy expects the new offering to resonate with the adventurous Australian market.
Also noting the local preference for longer cruises, he revealed that the company is moving on to a new reservation system which will allow multiple cruises to be combined on one invoice. “So if you have clients that want to go back to back to back, longer cruises, we can do it,” he said.
