Jim Barreiro de Leon, president and chief executive of Miami-based Cruise Management International (CMI), is gearing up to take charge next year of the first in a series of expedition cruiseships designed in Europe but built in China.
CMI is tasked with managing the Infinity-class vessels, of which four firm orders and six options have been placed by owner SunStone Ships.
Barreiro says he relishes the challenge after taking over at the helm of CMI last year from Ken Engstrom, who was a long-time partner with chairman Niels-Erik Lund at predecessor International Shipping Partners (ISP).
Barreiro's track record in cruiseship management goes back a long way. After several years at sea, he spent 21 years managing V.Ships Leisure’s passengership fleet.
“My mandate is to focus on the ships we have now under management, the newbuildings about to come out, and to make sure we do a good job for our investors in maintaining and running those vessels,” he says.
Life-cycle management
“I believe in streamlined operations, and proactive management, but most of all in total life-cycle management, bringing the whole thing together, making it work so the passengers onboard are ultimately pleased with the product.
"We don’t operate internal companies. We don’t cross-sell any of our services. We don’t apply a vertical revenue strategy whereby we generate additional revenues from other areas. We focus on one thing and that is passenger shipmanagement for a fee.”
Barreiro says he has been given a free hand to "take the company to the next level".
The newbuilding project at the heart of CMI's next phase is being driven by Lund, the SunStone Ships president and chief executive and chairman of CMI, who is one of four Danish investors in CMI.
Lund has been in passengerships for about 50 years and been part of the Florida cruiseship scene for much of that time.
Another investor is Copenhagen-based Clipper Group, which several years ago placed a number of passengerships under management of ISP. Lund formed ISP after being sent to Miami by DFDS Seaways to sell SeaEscape, in which it was a shareholder.
Largest third-party manager
CMI lays claim to being the largest third-party manager of passengerships by number, although many of its 14 cruiseships are owned by those investors.
The first newbuilding — the Greg Mortimer — is scheduled for delivery by China Merchants Industry Holdings in August next year for charter to Australia’s Aurora Expeditions, which has taken a 50% stake in the ship.
Ulstein Design & Solutions is designing the X-Bow style, 130-passenger to 200-passenger newbuildings and supervising construction, as well as delivering the complete European-sourced technical package.
Tillberg Design of the US is responsible for interior design of the Infinity series, with Makinen of Finland handling the cabins and public spaces, while CMI will manage the deck and engine. CMI's hotel-management sister company is CMI Leisure.
Preparing the 'way forward'
Barreiro says he has visited all of the company's vessels since he took over at CMI, listened to the crews, clients and office staff, and designed a “strategy with a lot of short and long-term objectives to get the company ready for the future and become scaleable”.
He adds: “We did an entire gap analysis on the various processes that were in place, succession planning, and looked at our safety-management system.”
Designing new processes and the “way forward” is ongoing.
Barreiro says CMI needs to remain “aggressive” on crew retention, given the challenge facing the company and the industry as a whole in finding enough qualified crew for all of the new cruiseships coming into service.
He says he wants CMI to be recognised as the “company extremely good at small-ship management” — a sector it claims to dominate — but also as having the skills and resources to handle larger vessels.
“I think we could do up to 3,000 passenger [vessels],” he says.
About 10 of the company’s 14 cruiseships belong to CMI's investors, which Barreiro says means “we are also our own tonnage providers”, easing the pressure when competing for vessels against third-party manager rivals such as Wilhelmsen Ship Management, Columbia Shipmanagement, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement and V. Ships.
