Portuscale Cruises: the cancelation of cruises in 2015 doesn’t surprises anyone…

Portuscale Cruises will not schedule any cruises in 2015. The company made this announcement on February 12, 2015 to its future passengers through a letter.

It explains, in Portuguese, that “Pearl Cruises - Transportes Maritimos (the parent company), owner of the Funchal ship, was not able to gather the necessary conditions to insure the operation of cruises in 2015.”

The Funchal will not leave the shore this year. Which means that the company will not be operating, since, as noted by Mer et marine, it is currently the only ship to navigate under the Portuscale Cruises banner.

In fact, the French website is no longer accessible. As for its Portuguese version, it is now restricted to just the homepage showing the company’s logo.

In the letter, it is specified that the amounts paid in advance by the clients will be “directly reimbursed.” Furthermore, it is difficult to know the number of people affected.

The management doesn’t provide more details on the reasons behind this decision. Is the boat not in shape to navigate? Are there not enough clients to render the activities profitable?

It is difficult to gather more information. Especially since the representatives of Portuscale Cruises have not responded to our email or phone solicitations.

However, the cancelation of the itineraries scheduled in 2015 does not shock specialists in the sector. That is the case for Francois Weill, who writes for TourMaG.com.

“Everything is happening just the way I had predicted in my chronicle of January 16, 2014,” he observes.

Over one year ago, in an article titled “Cruise boats: let’s stop the therapeutic obstinacy”, he wrote:

“Rui Alegre, head of Portuscale, who took over four ships of Classic International Cruises, is a man who did most of his career in real estate.

And in real estate, restoration work applied to buildings or century-old houses, does not involve any specific problem. The situation is quite different in the maritime world: a ship has to face a growing number of international norms.”

An opinion shared by the head of a tour-operator (TO) who chartered cruises to Portuscale Cruises during the 2014 summer. “Rui Alegre is flexible, sympathetic, he’s not a bad guy. But he doesn’t know anything about the sector,” he insures.

When he collaborated with the company, he was surprised to notice that it only hired former employees of Classic International Cruises. But what particularly shocked him was the “terrifying” lack of management.

“The company’s employees had absolutely no idea what would happen the next day. Not due to their company’s hardships but to a lack of information,” continues the director.

An issue that François Weill had also implicitly mentioned in his chronicle of January 2014: “Same goes for some names, that reappeared here and there, that made some tremble when thinking of the feathers left behind in a not so ancient past.”

Furthermore, despite important renovation efforts, the Portuscale Cruises boats are too old. Which wouldn’t even allow the company to transform into a simple charter company.

But, despite the lack of knowledge of the sector and the choices made by the company’s director, it seems that the whole cruises market of so-called “decently sized” ships is currently suffering.

Hubert Debbasch, CEO of Terre Entière, a specialized travel company, even predicts “the end of cruises on small boats. The market is nearing its end.”

He adds that, from now on, nobody invests in the construction of new boats of 400 to 500 passengers.

Large companies that offer stays on “giants of the seas” are holding the majority of clients. The remainder goes to “niche” operators, that are particularly positioned in the high-end sector.

Furthermore, “the worth of these ships isn’t seen by passengers. They are too big for someone looking for a circuit on a small ship and stays are too expensive compared to the offers of major XXL boats,” adds Hubert Debbasch.

In such a context, the Portuscale Cruises project, a company born out of the buyout of 4 ships of Classic International Cruises in 2013, only had limited chances of making it. It probably even started it out dead.