10
CRUICE NORTH 2015
Innovative Shore Excursions:
The unique history
of Northern Norway
The world’s northernmost cruise region – Northern Norway and Spitsbergen – is
characterized by magnificent scenery, rich natural resources and a population that
brings to life a region that at corresponding latitude elsewhere on earth would not be
populated at all. This is largely due to the warm currents of the Gulf Stream, which
flow along our coast and all the way up to Spitsbergen.
CRUISE NORTH MAGAZINE
Our region is waiting to share its unique
and exciting history – and many of those
who travel here probably do so without
realising just how many attractions,
activities and experiences await them.
In order to get a true understanding
of the “History of Northern Norway”, a
couple of years ago the CNNS cruise
network initiated a project designed to
develop new shore excursions based on
the region’s history, landscape, natural
resources and people. Every cruise port
in our network was gathered around the
table and asked the following question:
What is unique about your destination?
After a round of self-examination, we
arrived at a unified overview and Unique
Selling Points were defined for each
destination (see the overview on page
17). This would enable the region to
emerge as differentiated and attractive,
so that no client could ever rightly claim
that “
all the ports offer the same”
. This
has been an exciting exercise for CNNS.
It proved to be a positive process that
contributed to everyone gaining a better
understanding of what each other could
offer, while at the same time being able to
work tirelessly on their own niche within
an attractive entirety.
Access to good buses and qualified
guides is a virtue of necessity for every
destination, but it’s also pretty basic.
A far greater challenge is the ability to
develop attractive packages that are
adapted to suit the market and may
Four questions about cruise:
Cruise North magazine has chatted with contacts at all
the cruise destinations in CNNS in order to present local
recommendations. We asked the following questions:
n
If you were an overseas cruise passenger visiting your
destination, what would you have done during your visit?
n
What are the Unique Selling Points (USP) for your
destination?
n
What is important in order for the cruise passengers to
have a successful visit to your destination?
n
What are you going to do to improve the future experience
for the cruise line and passengers?
be offered at an acceptable price. But
CNNS’s members wanted to go further
than that.
“We wanted to be innovative
and took advantage of special expertise in
this area,”
says the Managing Director of
CNNS, Erik Joachimsen. “
The whole point
of our signature project is to generate
creativity and also to offer the cruise
passengers physically active, exotic shore
excursions based on Norway’s slogan
‘Powered by Nature’. We believe this will
provide us with success in the future
,”
says an optimistic manager of CNNS.
On the following pages, we have invited
our local cruise heroes to express their
favourite shore excursions at their own
destination as well as their thoughts
about the future. You will also find an
overview of innovative shore excursions,
which will be available from the 2015
season for agents and cruise lines to sell
to passengers on board the cruise ships.
Please feel free to contact your cruise
agent or the specific destination for a
more detailed description of the unique
opportunities on offer.
We will also take this opportunity to
recommend our readers to visit our
shorex database at cnns.no/shorex-store.
Enjoy!
