Ponant's order of a 30,000-gt icebreaking cruiseship last year reflected the luxury owner's confidence in shipbuilder Vard.
Booking Le Commandant Charcot was also a fitting way of celebrating the operator’s 30 years in business in 2018. Design and construction is said to be costing around €274m ($310m).
Stephen Winter, Ponant international sales director, describes the vessel as the company’s “most ambitious ship yet”. As well as polar destinations such as the North Pole, it is designed to visit parts of Antarctica inaccessible until now. The ship will accommodate 270 passengers in 135 staterooms, as well as 180 crew.
Winter says cruises on Le Commandant Charcot, for which the keel was laid in December, “will take us to price levels we haven’t reached yet”. Ponant’s North Pole itineraries start at €19,000 online for 13 to 17 nights.
The ship will feature 16 Zodiac motor-powered inflatables and two helicopters for remote excursions. Talks are ongoing with ports, including Spitsbergen in Svalbard, for the regular supply of LNG and food.
"We will have gone from five ships in 2015 to 12 by 2021,” Winter says. “And we are getting back to the point where people are starting to think [again] about the French when it comes to cruising.
Vive la France
“Take the best of French food, French style, French savoir-faire and put it into a beautiful new ship. It appeals to quite an international group of people.”
All of Ponant’s officers and crew are French, whereas hotel staff are typically drawn from the Philippines, Indian Ocean and similar locations.
“The only rule of thumb is they have to be bilingual because French and English are the two official languages onboard,” Winter says.
He describes joint founder Jean-Emmanuel Sauvee as basically running the show for Ponant’s investors, “making sure the people who own the ships are pleased with the results”.
Capacity is around 90% sold for this year and “very strongly” sold into 2020 at 50% to 60%. More than 1,000 people have pre-registered to visit the North Pole once the icebreaker is delivered.
Winter attributes Ponant’s growth to the company becoming a more international player.
Ten years ago, it had a handful of very strong US clients chartering its ships and creating their own programmes, with the rest mostly French.
Since then, Ponant has grown especially in the Australian and Asian markets, including Chinese and Japanese clients, as well as attracting more passengers from Europe, the Middle East and South America.
Today, around 55% of passengers are international and 45% French, with the “majority of people cruising being lovers of France and French cuisine”, he says.
Meanwhile, Winter discounts fears that too many expedition cruiseships are on order, arguing that his own calculation of all those being delivered between now and 2022 total less than the berths on, for example, one of Royal Caribbean’s mass-market newbuildings.
'Room for growth'
“The oceans are large and these ships are small,” he says. “I think there is still room for growth. But there will be competition and we’ll have to be on our toes. This is a nice niche to be in. There is plenty of demand. People want new experiences.”
Sauvee has indicated more newbuildings will follow, but it is unclear whether they will also be hybrid ships. Winter describes Sauvee as a very ambitious man.
Winter says over the years “people have been knocking on the door” but Ponant has sought to remain independent and not be swallowed by one of the big cruiseship players.
“We have a unique DNA being the only luxury French cruise operation and not owned by one of the bigger players is one of our selling points,” he says. “We want to be able to compete with them with our growing fleet and not get diluted, which could happen if a bigger entity owned us.”
The woman responsible for interior designs and fabrics on Ponant’s fleet is deputy chief executive Veronique Albertini-Saade.
“You will see her touch in everything onboard our ships,” Winter says.
