Plantours: MS Hamburg in a New Guise
Plantours introduces, on the occasion of its relocation from Bremen to Hamburg, the innovations concerning the ship, the itinerary, and the corporate image.
There are many novelties for 2024 at Plantours: a new corporate design, including a fresh livery for the Hamburg, a new headquarters in Hamburg (previously in Bremen), and numerous new routes and destinations for the company’s only ocean cruise ship. On June 14, the company and its owner invited customers and partners to the new offices on the Alster and Elbe rivers, as well as aboard the Hamburg.
Founded in 1989 as Plantours & Partner in Hanover, the company, born from a travel agency, began operations in 1990 with the Vistamar, built in 1989. Plantours & Partner relocated to Bremen in 1994, and in 2006, the Italian catering group Ligabue (Venice) joined the company. In 2012, the Hamburg replaced the Vistamar, and Plantours & Partner became Plantours Kreuzfahrten. In 2020, the Lady Diletta entered service, the first of Plantours’ two river cruise ships, and now there are six river cruise ships in the program. The recent move is due to a change in location, but the new headquarters in the Pazifikhaus on Holzdamm in Hamburg places the company in the heart of Germany’s largest maritime hub in its 35th year of operation.
MS Hamburg
Plantours
MS HAMBURG – The World Explorer Ship
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Hamburg_Pooldeck
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World Cruises and More
Guests aboard the Hamburg have more than enough opportunity for this once they are on board. In fact, the former cruise ship C. Columbus is not a ship for short cruises at all, quite the opposite. As stated by Oliver Steuber, they are currently increasingly accommodating the passengers’ wishes to travel with the ship for more than seven days. Additionally, many of them recently avoid long flights, which is why the Hamburg offers “cruises at your doorstep” until autumn, departing and ending in Hamburg but possibly reaching the Canary Islands. Similar operations are also underway for shipping companies in the British market (from Southampton), and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises recently announced that it prefers to use one of its expedition cruise ships for Northern Europe instead of Antarctica in the cold winter months.
On the other hand, Plantours is again offering the well-established and popular cruises around Cuba for winter 2024/25. Now a classic in the program, each lasting eleven days (on three dates) and including, among other things, an overnight stay in the island’s capital, Havana.
Hamburg Press Conference
Hamburg Reception
Already bookable is the world cruise 2025/26, which will depart from Hamburg on December 6, 2025, and in 134 days will take guests to Rio de Janeiro, Cape Horn, Antarctica, Cape Town, and the Indian Ocean. Only the beloved Amazon cruises, which were also popular in the past, have sadly been removed from Plantours’ program due to exorbitant pilot fees that left the company no choice. However, in Hamburg and Venice with Ligabue, there is optimism: in 2023, revenues generated by Hamburg increased by 23% compared to the previous year, and bookings for the first four months of 2024 are already 10% higher than the same period last year. Perhaps it is time for Plantours to seriously consider acquiring a second ocean cruise ship? In any case, the name has already been decided, joked Inti Ligabue during the press conference on June 14: if the current ship is named ‘Hamburg’, after Plantours’ headquarters, the second ship could only be called ‘Venezia’. We just have to wait and see when this will actually happen.
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