Dear editors,

Last week, we were pleased to secure a contract in China to handle the technical and hotel management of the 69,800-gt cruise Oriana, once the vessel is transferred to Twinkle Travel Cruise International Co. We are proud to be building on our legacy in the cruise sector, as the first shipmanager to create a separate company for cruise and the first manager to set up a fleet cell in China for large-scale cruise operations.

As is common practice in the industry, we do not usually comment on the details of notices of awards. However, in response to your article of 14 September, “V.Ships wins Chinese cruise deal as rivals allege it waived fees” it has become necessary for us in this instance, to clarify some points in response to short-sighted claims that we have waived our usual shipmanagement fees.

In our bid, there were two elements — technical management and hotel management. For technical management, we quoted a monthly fee, as is standard across our organisation, as did the three other bidders. We know this as all key numbers were read out to all bidders after the bids were unsealed in front of us.

V.Group provided two options for hotel management — a fixed rate per passenger per day, or, a ‘costs plus’ monthly fee covering the costs of hotel management, plus a monthly fee. We offered both so that the owner could select the option which aligned best with their needs, demonstrating our flexible partnership approach, with the client’s needs firmly front and centre.

The fixed fee pricing model is common across the 1,280 vessels for which we provide catering worldwide and has proved immensely popular with shipowners across the industry. We are happy to clarify that charging a daily rate per passenger per day does not constitute the waiving of a shipmanagement fee.

We are pleased to be at the forefront of a growing number of third-party management companies making headway in the cruise management sector in China. We believe that healthy, collegiate competition between shipmanagers in this sector will only serve to raise standards of safety and service in this rapidly growing sector, and deliver increasing value for smaller, independent cruise companies.

Per Bjornsen,

Director, V.Ships Leisure