Environmental
Leading a company that has been going strong for over 30 years comes with its own pressures, but taking the reins during a global pandemic is something altogether more challenging – particularly as Ponfoort knew of Aurora’s reputation as a serious expeditionary outfit, well respected by experts and operational specialists. “At Aurora, people had put many years into building a fantastic company,” Ponfoort explains. “[It] has just built a new ship and still has another one coming, so the focus on growth was and still is very strong.”
Sustained growth is something this small segment of the global cruise industry has been very good at, pulling in record numbers of guests and birthing increasingly adventurous itineraries over the past five years. According to CLIA, the number of trips to Antarctica, the Arctic, the Galápagos Islands and Greenland rose by almost one-third between 2017 and 2018, reaching 148,000 passengers – a trend that has been predicted to increase over the next five years. Alaska also experienced double-digit expansion with year-on-year growth of 17% in 2017 and 13% in 2018, accounting for more than one million passengers. The vessels themselves have changed too. When expeditionary cruising began in the 1960s intrepid explorers such as Lars-Eric Lindblad, founder of eponymous Lindblad Travel, toured in old Soviet icebreakers with rickety bunkbeds. Now the sector can deliver a little more luxury. Operators such as Ponant and Silversea cater for affluent travellers in search of personal enrichment and comfort. On board their vessels guests can enjoy fine dining, luxury suites and cinema rooms.
Alongside established names like Aurora and Lindblad, mainstream cruise lines have also joined the party. Celebrity Cruises has its Xpeditions brand, specialising in Galápagos Islands tours, while Crystal Cruises was the first to send a large luxury cruise ship through the Northwest Passage in 2016. With the pandemic halting travel, expeditionary cruising seems well placed to capitalise on cooped up remote workers yearning for fulfilling experiences in bucket list destinations. Aurora’s new itineraries centre around Alaska, the Russian Far East, Raja
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Ampat, West Papua, the North West Passage and Baja California. But what type of person goes on an expeditionary cruise? “Generally speaking, they’re [already] avid cruisers and they’re looking to try something new and small ships appeal to them,” Ponfoort says. “I think you’ll always get a little bit of that because people are still discovering expedition cruising. And even before the pandemic, you had a big increase of people coming across to the sector.”
Mindful travel
A growing sense of climate change awareness is a key driver of this demand, with guests seeking to glimpse the Arctic and Antarctica as the ice caps continue to recede. The expeditionary ethos also ties in with a trend among more affluent passengers who are seeking to enrich the mind and create lifelong memories. While once expeditionary voyages were more like research tours for explorers, scientists and nature enthusiasts – Aurora was founded by Australian mountaineer Greg Mortimer in 1991 – those experts now deliver tailor-made itineraries to worldly travellers. That unique expertise is still very much the lifeblood of a successful expedition. Take an Aurora cruise to the Antarctic and you can spend a day exploring the local scenery on Zodiacs, swimming with cold-water diving instructors or learning about glacier degradation from a marine climatologist. Aurora’s professional photographer can even show you how to get the perfect shot of a penguin. In the evening a historian can teach you about the pioneering exploration of Scott or Shackleton, or a naturalist can take you through the challenges of marine conservation in the region. These experts are not merely the preserve of polar enthusiasts. Journey with Aurora to Raja Ampat and the West Papua Islands in Indonesia, and biodiversity experts are on hand to talk guests through the 1,500 types of fish in the ‘Coral Triangle’. The next day a local historian will take you on a guided tour of Ambon, the capital city of Maluku, one of Indonesia’s oldest provinces, where you can learn about the fraught history of Dutch colonial rule.
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Above: Guests on a polar cruise with Aurora glimpse a walrus in its natural habitat.
Opposite page: The Aurora Greg Mortimer, one of the company's ships designed for active expeditions.
Aurora Expeditions
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