Luxury lifestyle and hospitality brand Crystal unveiled details of a multimillion-dollar “re-imagining” of its existing ocean-going cruise ships Crystal Symphony and Crystal Serenity to media attending the Cruise360 travel agent conference in Fort Lauderdale.
The ships will enter drydock late this year and in 2018 respectively for upgrades to staterooms, public spaces and dining venues.
Crystal Symphony’s enhancements will include 28 new penthouses and 12 penthouse suites with butler service and new and redesigned culinary offerings. Crystal Serenity will undergo its makeover in the fall 2018 to take on 36 penthouses and two penthouse suites.
Onboard both ships, existing restaurants including the main dining room and Lido Café will be redesigned into different offerings called Waterside and Marketplace respectively, The Brazilian steakhouse Churrascaria and Asian eatery Silk will also debut.
The Palm Court social lounge on Serenity will be redesigned with more intimate seating and the Starlite Club on Symphony, will also get a new look, Crystal said.
Guests sailing on both ships starting Oct. 21 of this year will have free Wi-Fi access.
Crystal Serenity is slated to offer a series of Caribbean sailings from Port Everglades starting in mid-October. Symphony will arrive there in mid and late 2018 for a similar deployment
As part of a bullish brand expansion, which includes new river and expedition yachts, new ocean-going vessels with private residences, an air charter division and AirCruises unit, the company is now calling itself Crystal to better reflect the diversity of its luxury offerings.
“We don’t just call ourselves Crystal Cruises anymore,” said Edie Rodriguez, Crystal’s president and CEO. “We’re now Crystal, the world’s most luxurious lifestyle and hospitality brand portfolio and under that is our core foundation of Crystal cruises.”
“Sadly in the cruise industry new is only new for a year, it’s like even when you have a new-build, next year, it’s last year’s thing,” she said. “So we continue to invest many, many millions of dollars into them to make sure that they’re exciting, revitalized, reinvented.”
With an expanded main dining room Crystal will be able to offer single-seating dining, meaning guests can dine whenever they want, instead of being locked into a scheduled time due to space constraints.
“We’re the only luxury brand today that doesn’t have true single-seating dining,” Rodriguez said. “At the end of the day, more suites will mean [fewer] staterooms in total, and that will mean less guests, but the guest-to-space ratio in the public spaces will be even better…so it’s going to be an even more intimate feeling.”
asatchell@sun-sentinel.com, 954-356-4209 or Twitter@TheSatchreport
