NOVA STAR SPIRIT OF TASMANIA CARONTE & TOURIST PEN … · Nova Star Cruises’ website proudly exclaims that the NOVA STAR offers, “The fun of a cruise…The convenience of a ferry!”

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FERRY, RO-RO AND CRUISE INFORMATION FOR PROFESSIONALS

• NOVEMBER 2015 • NO.11

NOVA STARSPIRIT OF TASMANIACARONTE & TOURIST

PEN AR BEDHÖEGH TARGET

REFUGEE FERRIES

FERRY ON ORDER

1NOV 15 – SHIPPAXCFI

GAs And JAils

Belgium, my native country, has been in a state of shock after a journalist found

out that detailed general arrangement plans (GAs) of prisons were available online.

Yes, prisons!

in the meanwhile we were trying to convince ship owners and yards to provide us

with GAs of new and newly-converted ferries and cruise ships for the annual ship-

pax designs 15.

it is frustrating to see that, while GAs of prisons are on the web, we have had

considerable difficulties in obtaining GAs of cruise ships. Take, for example, the

nORWEGiAn EsCAPE. (i know, it’s the naughty boy in me who, in the context of

the Belgian prison GA debacle, found the ship’s name quite appropriate.) Obtaining

correct data is becoming increasingly difficult nowadays - a surprising fact in our

digital world, in which seemingly everybody believes everything is just a few clicks

away.

it is the same with getting permission to take photos, or conducting interviews

with executives (typically nowadays, before publication is accepted by shipping

companies’ ‘public relations’ agencies, these are stripped of any remotely interest-

ing information).

Recently some of our correspondents have been invited for a press event on a

navy grey painted ro-ro ship, which was not a warship though even although coin-

cidentally it had the suffix “TARGET” in the name. Although it was a media event

they were not allowed to take photos inside, and they were not allowed to talk

to most of the crew, because these persons “were not media-trained”, as if a leak

could occur at any moment. Journalists are often pampered, but what the profes-

sional shipping press really wants is accurate information.

Our target at shippax is to pamper you with information. Your help in gathering

data, statistics, knowledge and intelligence is much appreciated. We believe that

releasing information, and not keeping it ‘behind bars’ is to the benefit of the

whole passenger shipping industry.

Mike louagie

14 October 2015

Published by: shippax AB P.O.Box 7067sE-300 07 HAlMsTAd swedenTel: +46 (0)35 218370Fax: +46 (0)35 130129

Visiting address: Horngatan 4sE-302 33 HAlMsTAdsweden

Website: www.shippax.se

Publisher: Elizabeth Mandersson

Editor-in-chief: Mike louagie, shippaxE-mail: [email protected]

Advertising: Göran Freiholtz, shippaxE-mail: [email protected]

Statistics: E-mail: [email protected]

Subscriptions and Accounts:E-mail: [email protected]

Graphic production: Annika Kuitunen, shippaxE-mail: [email protected]

Proofreading: Andreas lundgren

Photographers:Mike louagie Frank BehlingGeorge Giannakissøren lund HviidTom GulbrandsenJakub Bogucki

Contributing correspondents:Australia dale CrispBenelux Philippe HolthofCanada Aaron saundersCroatia neven JerkovicFinland Eero MäkinenFrance Philippe Brébant nathalie Bureau du ColombierGermany Frank Behling Christian Eckardt Kai OrtelGreece david Glassitaly Angelo scorzaJapan Tsuyoshi ishiyamaPoland Peter B. starenczakPortugal luís Miguel Correiaspain Mike Barker Alan lamU.K. Russell Plummer Bruce Peter susan ParkerUsA Art sbarsky

Founder: Arne steving, in 1965

Printers: Åkessons Tryckeri, Emmaboda

Contributing correspondents and news items do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors.

information believed to be correct but cannot be guaranteed.

no reprint or further distribution without permission.

SHIPPAXCFI is owned by shippax AB,reg no 556937-9414.

issn 1102-934X© SHIPPAXCFI

A brief call at the Westerplatte Terminal (Gdansk) allowed for a short meeting with the Polish Shippax correspondents, Jakub Bogucki (left) and Piotr B. Starenczak.


CONTENTS

COMMENT

01 Asking the right questions

INSIDE STORY

04 Brittany Ferries économie: Value price, Brittany Ferries standards

THEME

09 Good times ahead for Condor Ferries?

14 The most unusual ferries in the world, possibly

MIDSHIPS

17 news

37 statistics

41 Projects and conversions

42 Fleet changes

43 On order: high-speed

46 TECH TALK

COMPANY PROFILE

48 Rederij doeksen

52 interview with Paul Melles, CEO, Rederij doeksen

JUST DELIVERED

54 KAiARAHi

58 lOCH sEAFORTH

REGIONAL PROFILE

62 Albania, what is the country’s cruise and ferry potential?

68 ireland-France: success ahead

FERRY TAIL

72 Asterix, Obelix and Vercoutre

PHOTOS: RiCHARd sEVillE, AlAn BlUndEn, MiKE lOUAGiE, REdERiJ dOEKsEn, sTEnA RORO

COVER: dAlE CRisP

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4 SHIPPAXCFI – NOV 15

On April 15, 2014, the 161-me-tre long NOVA STAR sailed into the harbour at Yarmouth,

Nova Scotia, Canada for the first time. Originally built in 2011 as NORMAN LEADER for France-based LD Lines, her contract was cancelled before she could ever leave the shipyard. NORMAN LEADER sat idle at the Singapore Technologies Shipbuilding yards in Singapore until 2014, when she sailed for Canada as NOVA STAR, the flagship for the newly-formed Nova Star Cruises.

Her formal entry into service one month later marked the first passenger ferry service between the American state of Maine and the Province of Nova Scotia since service was terminated in 2009 due to rising subsidy costs. Sailing from Yarmouth to Portland, Maine, the


nOVA’s FAdinG sTARTEXT: AAROn sAUndERsPHOTOS: MARKO sTAMPEHl

arrival of NOVA STAR was greeted with excitement and optimism.

Both would turn out to be short-lived. In her first two operating seasons, things haven’t gone well for Nova Star Cruises. Ridership numbers for 2015 have been substantially lower than forecasted. A much-publicised an-nouncement in August that the NOVA STAR had secured winter work as a ferry between Ramsgate, England and Boulogne, France collapsed when the Isle of Thanet Gazette in the UK re-ported that the venture hadn’t even received permission from UK officials and would not go ahead. A plan was floated to spend CAD$8-million refitting the NOVA STAR for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) operations, despite the fact

that LNG facilities do not exist in either of the ship’s turnaround ports.

On top of it all, the taxpayers of Nova Scotia are footing the bill, with no clear idea as to what they’re gaining from their “investment.”

THE ROUTESailing from Yarmouth to Portland is nothing new: CN Marine had been operating services to the region for a few years in the 1970’s before scrap-ping it entirely. In 1982, Prince of Fundy Cruises was established to provide service between the two cities using the newly-christened SCOTIA PRINCE, the former STENA OLYMPICA. The


company was bought-out in 2000, and SCOTIA PRINCE reflagged in the Bahamas. Under the new Scotia Prince Cruises banner, the ship sailed on between Yarmouth and Portland until 2004, when asbestos was discovered in the terminal in Portland. Struggling financially, Scotia Prince Cruises can-celled their entire 2005 season.

The route sailed by NOVA STAR is a seasonal one, operating this year between June 1 and October 13. Each morning, NOVA STAR departs Yar-mouth at 9:30 a.m. Atlantic Time, arriving in Portland at 6:30 p.m. East-ern Time. Remaining berthed for 90 minutes, she then sets sail at 8:00 p.m. EST for Yarmouth, where she arrives at approximately 8:00 a.m. Atlantic Time.

With a capacity for 1,215 passengers, NOVA STAR features private accommo-dations for 652 guests in 163 cabins. A total of 263 vehicles of varying sizes can be accommodated on the Car Deck, and NOVA STAR also features three onboard restaurants.

Mealtimes might get a bit com-petitive: seating in all three combined is only available for 424 passengers That is, if the NOVA STAR were sailing full. It’s not.

THE CHAnGinG FACE OF nORTH AMERiCAn TRAVElA number of unfortunate economic and behavioural factors are conspiring against Nova Star Cruises’ plans on the Yarmouth-Portland run.

Hit by a falling Canadian Dollar that now puts the U.S. Dollar on-par with the Euro, many Canadians have curbed their impulsive weekend jaunts south of the border. Canadians in general are graced with more vacation time than their American counterparts and nearly 60 percent of the population holds a passport valid for international travel.

While Canadians reel from their falling currency, a different set of fac-tors are keeping Americans away from Canada. The Canadian Dollar hit parity and skyrocketed above the U.S Dollar back in 2007. The Great Recession wal-loped the travel industry in 2008, and American travellers simply assume that the Canadian Dollar is still an expensive proposition for them, when in fact the opposite is true.

Compounding the problem is the relatively low number of Americans that have passports. According to U.S. State Department statistics, just 46 percent of the population has a passport valid for

international travel, which is required to enter Canada by any mode of transpor-tation.

American vacation habits are also changing. Gone are the two-week holidays, replaced with short weekend getaways as people grapple a changing culture that frowns on being away from work for too long. The surge in low-cost, no-frills airlines in the United States like Southwest and Spirit means that flying to some far-flung destination is now within reach of even the most modestly-budgeted vacationer. Simply put, Ameri-cans are flying to places like Las Vegas for their weekend getaway instead of taking a ferry up to Nova Scotia.

In their August 2015 Monthly Activ-ity Report, Nova Star Cruises notes that overall Canadian ridership fell from 5,848 passengers in August 2014 to just 2,881 in August 2015, representing an overall drop of 40 percent. American ridership – which is lumped in with all international visitors in the Report – rose six percent to 31,150 passengers in August 2015, though it is not clear what percentage of ridership is international. Judging by the fact that American and international guests have been lumped together in one category, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine numbers for one of the two are disappointing. It’s also a far cry of the 100,000 annual ferry ridership the company had been expecting before entry into service last year.

Either way you cut it, one thing seems clear: Canadians just aren’t interested in utilising the ferry service. Promotional activities seem to be con-centrated south of the border, with Nova Star Cruises noting they plan to attend “a travel trade show hosted by Friend-ship Tours” of Bloomfield, Connecticut. Friendship Tours has six motorcoach trips arranged in conjunction with Nova Star Cruises, “and are looking to add more”, the report says.

The report does not mention plans to attend any industry conferences across Canada or the United States re-lated to tourism, ferries or cruise travel, which is particularly notable given the marketing strategy that the company has decided upon: brand NOVA STAR as a cruise ship.

Will THE REAl CRUisE PlEAsE sTAnd UP?Nova Star Cruises’ website proudly exclaims that the NOVA STAR offers, “The fun of a cruise…The convenience of a ferry!” It’s a neat marketing gim-

mick designed to bolster NOVA STAR’s perceived role as a pleasure cruise between Canada and the United States. The trouble is that no one will mistake NOVA STAR for a cruise ship.

Unlike operators in Scandinavia, where ferries like VIKING GRACE tend to offer all the amenities and features you’d expect from a small but modern cruise ship, NOVA STAR’s primary function is as a transportation vehicle. Per diems are relatively high for little to no amenities (food, for example, is basic and comes at an additional cost), and staterooms are small and meant exclusively for overnight crossings, not multi-day sailings.

The Portland Press Herald seems to be dialed in to this discrepancy. In a September 2015 article, the Herald notes that while Nova Star Cruises’ offers an overnight sailing aboard the NOVA STAR for USD$380 for two people in an inside cabin excluding meals, Holland America Line offers a weeklong Canada and New England cruise from Mon-treal to Boston aboard MAASDAM for USD$1391 for two people in an inside cabin – meals included.

If you do the math, the per diem aboard MAASDAM (Holland America Line) is just under two hundred dollars per day – or slightly more than one hun-dred dollars per person, per day. Pricing NOVA STAR above the per diem of an upper premium cruise line with all the expected bells-and-whistles does little to draw consumers to the product.

With the rise in cruise passenger traffic around the world, travellers who once might have taken a ferry to visit a particular destination are now doing so aboard a cruise ship. An excellent example of this was noted on Canada’s West Coast, where Black Ball Ferry Line noticed a 25 percent decline in ridership aboard the COHO from 2002 on the line’s Victoria-Port Angeles run; a drop consistent with the rise in cruise ships calling on Victoria’s Ogden Point cruise terminal every summer. Whereas travel-lers might have visited Victoria for the day from Washington State, many trav-ellers are now opting to visit Victoria as part of a larger cruise vacation to Alaska.

Back on the East Coast, a similar situation is present. Any cruise line worth their salt offers seasonal Canada &New England sailings that call on ports in Nova Scotia and New Bruns-wick, particularly during the months of September and October, when the fall colours are at their most prominent. The


statistics don’t lie: in the past 15 years, the number of passengers arriving at the historic Pier 21 cruise terminal in Hali-fax has risen from just 162,000 in the year 2000, to over 300,000 last year.

How does Nova Star Cruises plan to entice travelers to sail with them? As this article went to press, the company was holding a Christmas Tree Festival onboard the ferry, when most people would prefer to forget that Christmas is merely three months away.

Other promotions demonstrated a similar lack of forethought. The line had experimented with a somewhat disas-trous Groupon offer in June, advertising a roundtrip cruise to from Portland to Yarmouth aboard the NOVA STAR that would give visitors just 90 minutes to see Nova Scotia – minus the 30 minutes the company warns it could take to clear Canadian customs.

When the Groupon was announced in May, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) noted that the dis-claimed attached to the coupon, which offered discounts of as much as 30 per-cent off published fares, stated, “On ar-

rival in port, at 8 a.m., all passengers will be required to briefly disembark and go through Canadian customs, before immediately returning to the ship for a 9:30 a.m. departure and the 10-hour return voyage back to Portland.”

It was a masterclass in poor mar-keting. As a result of the Groupon, the CBC notes that Nova Star Cruises sold just 10 tickets. Sadly, in a shocking act of enabling, the Mayor of Yarmouth said “We’ll take the 90 minutes.” That pat-on-the-back was enough to prompt Danny Morton, Director of Cruise Marketing and Business Development with NOVA STAR, to proclaim the event a success, stating that passengers would get a more authentic Nova Scotia experi-ence onboard the NOVA STAR than they would on land. “They’re actually going to see a whole lot more of Nova Scotia right on board, with all the Nova Scotia products that we have.”

FUndY ROsE: THE FORGOTTEn AlTERnATiVECompounding the issues facing Nova Star Cruises is that another modern,

cheaper alternative exists: Bay Ferries’ FUNDY ROSE.

Sailing between Digby, Nova Scotia and St. John, New Brunswick, FUNDY ROSE began life as BLUE STAR ITH-AKI for Athens-based Blue Star Ferries. Built in 2000, she was purchased by the Government of Canada in October of 2014 to replace Bay Ferries’ long-serv-ing PRINCESS OF ACADIA. Renamed FUNDY ROSE, she set sail on her first two-and-a-half-hour crossing of the Bay of Fundy from Digby on July 28, 2015, and PRINCESS OF ACADIA was withdrawn from service the following day.

St. John, New Brunswick is just under 500 kilometres from Portland, Maine, with an approximate driving distance of four and a half hours. One-way passenger fares in peak season are CAD$45 per person, and a standard car costs CAD$90. Even though it involves more time on the road, the journey aboard FUNDY ROSE costs substan-tially less and takes less time to arrive in Portland than NOVA STAR’s nine-hour daytime journey from Yarmouth, and substantially less than the 13-hour over-night return voyage from Portland.

sUBsidizE METhe most concerning aspect of Nova Star Cruises is that the company, which appears to be largely feeling their way through the dark with their cruise-ferry hybrid business model, managed to smoke through every last cent of the CDN$28.5-million subsidy from the province of Nova Scotia during their first year of operations, and had already used CDN$8.1-million of their CDN$13-million 2015 subsidy by the first week of June.

While Nova Star CEO Mark Amund-sen remained optimistic at the time that the company would not need to dip into the remaining five million dollars of


their subsidy, other stakeholders weren’t as enamoured. Nova Scotia Transporta-tion Minister Geoff MacLellan warned that the 2016 season is “theirs to lose.” Spooked by the fact that Nova Star Cruises spent their entire 2014 subsidy in one go and appears ready to do the same with the latest round of funding, MacLellan announced in May that the Government would begin approaching potential operators for NOVA STAR’s 2016 season.

That sparked a flurry of accusations in Nova Scotia politics, with Opposition Leader Jamie Ballie remarking to the CBC that, “The fact that they’re a year and a half in and still don’t know exactly what they agreed to with Nova Star [Cruises] worries me greatly.”

On August 20, MacLellan stated that Nova Star Cruises had not provided updated financial information until that week. As a result of those financial statements, the Province found that the company needed another CAD$1.5-million to resolve “pressing payables.” The Government also determined that in order for Nova Star Cruises to meet their expected 80,000 passenger total, the line would have to carry 58,129 pas-sengers in just two months.

By mid-September, the Government of Nova Scotia had had enough. They set September 25 as the deadline for

four companies – including Nova Star Cruises – to submit proposals for opera-tion of the route between Yarmouth and Portland.

The Yarmouth County Vanguard reported on September 21 that the Gov-ernment has mandated that any service would have to operate from at least June 1 to September 30, inclusive. The Government clearly also wants to avoid having to do this sort of thing again in the future, stating in the Request for Submissions (RFS) that it intends to execute a Funding Agreement with the winning bid that would cover the 10-year period from 2016 to 2025, effective as of October 31, 2015. It also stipulates that any vessel placed on the run must be secured within 45 days of entering into an agreement with The Province. That statement puts the future of Nova Star Cruises – and the NOVA STAR herself – into serious doubt unless they win the bid for operations in 2016 and beyond.

sAilinG inTO THE nOVA sCOTiA sUnsET As of this writing, it’s difficult to predict where things will end up this time next year. One thing is clear, however: in its current form, the Yarmouth-Portland route is simply not sustainable. Blame it on the ship, blame it on the manage-

ment, blame it on the moon – things aren’t working. The company is plow-ing through subsidies even as ridership continues to plateau. Their sales and marketing efforts have been misguided and ill-conceived. Positioning the vessel as a proper cruise ship in a region that has no shortage of cruise ships isn’t fool-ing anyone.

Perhaps the biggest warning sign can be derived from history itself: as much as it is tinged with nostalgia, the SCO-TIA PRINCE was tainted with bad ideas towards the end of her career, including a brief flirtation with sending her on Caribbean cruises to the Yucatan Pe-ninsula from Tampa, Florida during the winter of 2002-03. She was withdrawn from service and the run was aban-doned in 2004, after the City of Portland evicted Scotia Prince Cruises for cancel-ling the 2005 Yarmouth season without prior notice.

The attempt to re-start service between Nova Scotia and Maine by Bay Ferries was scrapped in 2009 after the government subsidies needed to ensure the run’s existence got out of control.

A decade after SCOTIA PRINCE stopped sailing between Maine and Nova Scotia, and five years after Bay Ferries’ failed crack at it, NOVA STAR seems to be sailing toward a similarly ignominious fate.


THEMEsPiRiTs UPliFTEd

TEXT aNd INTERVIEw: dAlE CRisPPHOTOS: TT linE And dAlE CRisP


The refurbishment of the Bass strait ferries sPiRiT OF TAsMAniA i and ii was a massive undertaking. The work on both vessels was conducted virtually simultaneously. And all by a designer and a turnkey contractor working on the opposite side of the world to their usual sphere of operations.


At the end of september sHiPPAX CFi sat down with TT line’s marine project man-ager Massimo soprano, Figura owner Richard nilsson and Trimline CEO Andrew Richards to discuss the project and all its complexities.

This refurbishment seems to have been accomplished on a very short timeline.

MS: We’ve been working on this project for about 18 months, starting from when we began looking at different refurbish-ment options and from that point we moved into working on the concept design with the assistance of Richard, and then through the tender process se-lecting the turnkey contractor Trimline and finally the implementation stage in the last six months.

What we needed was very much what the market wanted, so we based our concept mainly on customer feed-back. Of course in a refurb scenario you look at similar ships, so we looked at ex Superfast class and some of the things that had been done that worked well, and some things that didn’t work. So a combination of market feedback and benchmarking other similar operations really helped us develop the final con-cept designs.

RN: We have worked for Stena since 1986 and we had done STENA SUPER-FAST VII, VIII and X so we had some experience of what might be done with the SPIRITs. When we met Massimo and Nick [Harriamn, TT Line GM retail & hospitality] on board VII and VIII they could see what might be a common experience, because Stena Line and we had done more or less what TT Line wanted to do, to create a continuous ex-perience on board rather than separate areas, a whole harmonious walk through the ship. Everything happened from there. With input from marketing and Massimo we did the concept design.

AR: We had worked with Richard in the past but this is a newer relation-ship. Richard was introduced to us on this project by Massimo. This was the first time working together on a project of this size. As a business Trimline has grown quite rapidly, in the last two years we’ve pretty much doubled turnover. We’re used to running multiple projects; we’re now up to about 115 people and we’re capable of running between 8 and 12 concurrently.

What were the greatest challenges?RN: Hardest challenge was to get an ul-timate solution with all the people in, to fit in all the features such as The Pantry and Tasmanian Market Kitchen and still have loads of space, with seating that is flexible so you can use it all over the day even if you are not eating … The other compromising thing, how do you get the people up to Deck 10.

There were no structural changes, which was important because of the enormous challenge of doing two ships simultaneously.MS: The decision was made that the two ships would be completed back-to-back. Of course there was a drydock already planned so logically the ship that was going to drydock was going to complete the refurb then, but then we had to come up with a solution for completing the second one. We looked at a couple of options that ended up working pretty well for us and Trimline. One was to use the time pre-drydock to take any opportunity to complete work ahead, so we looked at all the areas of the ship

where it was possible. As an example we did the cinemas before the main works, we did the recliner lounge, we did the cabins, the deluxe cabins. So anything that was possible to do before the main work was done …

Have you refitted a ship still in serv-ice before?AR: Not to the extent that we did in this case. We do a lot of work on the run on a lot of smaller projects but this was a LARGE project … I’m not aware of anything that’s been done a similar way in the past.

MS: We looked at the passenger numbers for this particular time of the year and we came up with the solution of running the second ship with just freight for about three weeks. And by scheduling some additional day sailings on the already-completed SPIRIT I we effectively managed to minimise any ef-fect on the passenger service.

Obviously doing a ship while it was still in service means there was a lot of extra effort in starting and finishing the project every day but that’s what you have to do … every morning and every evening you have to wheel everything on and off again! It was challenging but I think Trimline did extremely well in terms of getting into that sort of routine, in getting SPIRIT I ready for work and then ready for sailing every day, prior to drydock, so that was like a drill that Trimline carried on to be ready for SPIRIT 2. It was quite an amazing thing to see.

Were the staff and contractors stay-

TT Line’s marine project manager Massimo Soprano,

Figura owner Richard Nilsson, Trimline CEO

Andrew Richards and John Crossland, also Trimline.


ing onboard SPIRIT 2 while it was travelling backwards and forwards?AR: The majority of the workforce stayed on board. Some of the local Tasmanian contractors came on board whenever the ship was in Devonport … so they worked every other day.

MS: Yes, galleys kept running … obvi-ously there were challenges with a large number of contractors staying on board, with Deck 7 completely refurbishing, so there were a number of onboard logis-tics issues to be addressed as well.

AR: Teamwork was the key, all the way through the project, with the principal contractor but also with the crew on board, with the TT manage-ment team. The ships’ crew have been fantastic in feeding everyone, in organis-ing the cabins and keeping everything running and that can’t be underesti-mated how important that relationship was throughout this project. An army marches on its stomach and this army was particularly well fed!

How does that compare with others

you have done?AR: Because we were on board for a longer period relationships were made, friendships were made, everyone was wanting the project to succeed. Often, if it’s a cruise ship it’s a much larger crew so you don’t make those relationships; if it’s a ferry more often that’s done in dry-dock and a lot of the crew, especially the hospitality staff, don’t remain on board. So this was fairly unique – but it has also helped us in planning for future refits.

Richard, there are themes running through your previous work: what is the same and what is different here?RN: We always try to do things like they are a whole. We don’t like people walk-ing around going into one sack, going out again, into another sack getting food. They should walk around, experi-ence everything, there’s always some-thing around the corner that could be interesting too. So people move around … once people move they are potential customers for something; if they sit, they’re not. This is what we’ve learnt

from Stena Line: every seat is a commer-cial seat. You should never do something that is not commercial.

So that is what we always try to do. And in this case what was really nice was the local touch. Earlier we went with international trends, you know, what is fashionable in the city, coffee shops, things like that. But the Tas-manian Market Kitchen (TMK) was a really nice thing to do because it has to do with local feeling.

MS: The key to the concept was that we are the ambassador of Tasmania and so the moment that you walk on board the ship you start to experience Tasmania. That’s something we’ve been working towards for a number of years and this was really the opportunity to highlight that even more. The TMK is probably the best example in terms of showcasing Tasmanian products: during the concept we looked at things like [Hobart’s famous] Salamanca Market to get the feel of things. So the TMK has that sort of feel, not only fresh but that Tasmanian feel, not only in the menu

“Once people move they are potential customers for something; if they sit, they’re not”Richard Nilsson


but in the actual look, the artwork, eve-rything that is Tasmanian.

RN: Also we tried to integrate some things that are Tasmanian, so all the carpet has some kind of Tasmanian pat-tern in it, and the signage, and so on … you might not recognise it at once but it’s there.

One of the things I like about the ferry business is that you have very short time to decide, very short time to decide great concepts of design because nowadays owners are very late to make their decisions but this is a very big fi-nancial thing. You have a short time and

you have to make the right decisions! What we have achieved is we have

opened up the space, and if you compare to some of the other SUPERFASTs still in service in Europe the SPIRITs are very spacious inside. You find a lot ships with the centre casing, like these ones, have a lot of problems of not having a lot of open space. But I think we have maximised the opportunity for open-ing up Deck 7 in particular, and we have opened up 9 and 10.

Deck 9 and 10 were just wastelands.MS: Absolutely. It really was the concept

to not only travel on Deck 7 but go on and explore the decks above.

RN: It is also very hard for ferries in that you have low season with few passengers, high season with many pas-sengers – so when you work with open spaces you have to have the areas nice even if you have just 30 people in the restaurant or 300.

MS: The options for dining on board now probably address some of the issues in terms of expectations [which dif-fer for southbound tourist and north-bound commuters]. Now you can have a number of choices for you meal at the TMK: you can have a really high quality meal with main courses and all that, or you just grab a sandwich or a salad in The Pantry, or you can go and get a pizza on Deck 9.

AR: I think they have been very clever in the designs and in the service levels that are offered. Not only have they addressed it through the refurbs to the deluxe cabins which appeal to cer-tain people but also the recliner lounge has been completely re-modelled so that it works for smaller groups of people, rather than a larger group where you’re sitting maybe eight across; now there are smaller zones, and I think that helps address it; also there are now two cine-mas, there’s the investment in Wi-Fi and streaming and things like that on board


that appeal to northbound passengers that need to be on board, for business or whatever, rather than the tourists. I think that addresses it very well.

RN: And also the seating and the different styles. What you want is a comfortable seat and a comfortable ride, to be able to do what you want to do – it’s different if you want to eat, or want to read a book or magazine somewhere else. So we have different kinds of seat-ing.

MS: We really touch every aspect of the passenger experience. Accom-modation, dining, everything has been really refreshed. Nothing has been left original. We felt it was necessary to go through the entire ship to ensure the entire product was improved.

Even the Greek safety messages have finally been changed! AR: One of the briefs that have been addressed really well was Decks 9 and 10, which weren’t in a particularly good state. The refresh up there has made a huge difference. But also it’s the desire to have more day sailings, to give people more things to do, to address the whole family from the teenagers to the adults to the young children: they’ve all got

something to now to capture their atten-tion and their interest for a day sailing, which really wasn’t there before.

MS: It’s very early days to assess how these decks are working. We have only had a few day sailings so far – it is the first time we have ever included day sailings in September [which is still low season] – but some of those have been pretty busy in terms of numbers. It’s been generally positive.

AR: If you talk to the crew certainly people are distributing themselves around the whole of the passenger space whereas before they very much clus-tered around the main Deck 7 bar and I’m sure as the season comes in we’ll see that more and more. People find their zones and their spaces. As Richard mentioned earlier, the idea of people moving through and keeping them mov-ing has been well addressed very well. Everyone’s got a space. The crossings I’ve done, it’s been nice to see people exploring, finding, enjoying the facilities that TT Line has provided.

MS: The bookings are extremely strong.

AR: Those first day sailings which had never been done in September before were very well booked, which is

a great testament, and to the teamwork: the marketing that has gone on around the re-launch has created a fair bit of excitement here in Melbourne and in Devonport as well: it’s been a real com-munity approach.

What were the biggest challenges from Trimline’s point of view?AR: It goes in stages. We talked about the tender process; although we knew the project was coming up and we’d met Massimo at various events and times the actual bid process – the pre-qualifi-cation questionnaire through to tender documents through to survey and then submission was quite a compact period, less than a month I think. We had to mo-bilise in a very short time, bring people down for the surveying, go back and do the quote, so that was testing. Then there’s the period where your tender is evaluated, so you have the concern over whether the bid is going to win or not; we were very fortunate to be awarded in early February.

So then we had to kick our plans off; certainly some of the items were quite long lead-time items like some of the recliner seats, the carpets, decisions needed to be made very quickly. Mas-


simo and Richard were very helpful, travelling to our site in Southampton, spending time with our project manag-ers and our supply chain staff to start that selection process, confirming things as we went into the drawing cycle.

Then it moves into the waves of the logistics of manufacturing and sourcing the product, doing the technical surveys and drawings.

The logistics of this was probably the biggest challenge. The physical side of it, although they’re large ships and there’s two of them, nothing was actu-ally that complex. There wasn’t a lot of steel work, more interior work but the scale and the distance and that the fact that we were being asked to do one of the vessels on the run, which certainly added new challenges!

In our knowledge of Tasmania, we have in the business people who’ve lived down here locally, I’ve done business down in Tasmania before, we knew how important the local element was. We opened an office down here very quickly, we had someone on-site within 2-3 weeks of project award, looking at how we interact with the local commu-nity. All part of the challenge but also part of the opportunity.

We’ve come away having met some wonderful partners; we’ve put in a whole new supply chain down here in terms of capabilities; a lot of those we hope we’ll work with in the future but also they’re now on-site to be able to support TT Line going forward, which is great.

Did everything run to timetable in the end?AR: We’d like to do five ships! Because the first one is always more challenging, the second one becomes easier, so if we did three or four we’d be on a roll. The first one we finished to schedule, the second we actually finished three days early, which was fantastic. Everything is always tight on time and this was no dif-ferent! Especially when you are building some of the items that we couldn’t get in Tasmania, and shipping them in from Britain or the States, and there you are looking at a six-weeks lead time, just for shipping. We used sea freight, air freight, a mixture of everything – I think some things were even hand-carried in.

We employed a dedicated logistician for this project, which we haven’t done in the past, and he’s stayed with us and will help us with future refits because we’ve learnt a lot through the complex-

Bar 7

Reading Room

TMK or Tasmanian Market Kitchen


ity of this that we’ll use going forward.MS: It is useful to acknowledge how

the logistics were delivered and how well Devonport worked as a base for Trimline. It was extremely well organ-ised, our terminal site was re-arranged to accommodate this project and it worked extremely well. A lot of people were working in the background on our side to support the project, the logis-tics side: the terminal services, people helped us the in the freight department. It was quite impressive to find out, ex-cellent! It just happened, we didn’t have to ask. Trimline articulated their plan to use Devonport as the logistics base very well, and it was very well delivered the

way things fit with the normal day-to-day operations of the ship.

AR: It was all about de-risking the process. Although we’ve done work in Australia before they’ve tended to be shorter duration refits where we haven’t had to have the same requirements. On an international seagoing ship, our peo-ple may be on for a week. Here we have had people on site for several months: different things had to be understood about tax, visas, all those sort of things, which added to the complexity but also the interest of the whole project.

RN: This project has been the most communicative between us and a con-tractor that we have ever had, because

of the compressed timeline. That’s a good reason why it has been so suc-cessful, we have been able to help each other, save time, share information, always teamwork.

AR: One thing that stands this out from several: we say we are a turn-key contractor and TT Line has really embraced that whole principle and that did help to de-risk the project in that it was very clear who was responsible for what, who was doing that. One point of contact with Massimo as the clear project manager led to quick decision-making, clear lines of communication. If things weren’t going well we could have a discussion; if they were going well we

“The journey starts when you say ‘yes’ on the website”Richard Nilsson

Deck 10, Top Deck Lounge

Deck 9 Reception


knew all the time what was happening. Sometimes when people don’t embrace that on turnkey it becomes very compli-cated and messy. It was very clear we were responsible for delivering the refit and it was our opportunity to sink or swim doing it.

I came back out towards the end of the second refit and expected it to be all hands to the pumps, so to speak, with a week to go but it was all very relaxed, a credit to our project management team and our contractors. We could concen-trate on the fine finishing, the detail work, deliver a really good job on these two ships.

Typically with a project like this, do you each in your own roles re-visit from time-to-time to see what’s working and what’s not, or wait for feedback from the client?RN: If it’s possible we do – maybe not if it’s in the Galapagos! But the feedback from the client and contractor is so important, because then we learn some-thing for next time.

AR: For us this is a part of it: we’re back almost a month after the last SPIR-IT was finished to see how it’s settling in. We’ve obviously got a commitment to see that it work through a guarantee period but we also want the relation-ship with TT Lines, and that has been so good with Massimo, to continue.

We need to learn, we’re evolving, nothing stays still. We learned from Masimo that we could have done better, there’s advice we get that helps us learn. Also while this is a relatively small mar-ket place you need those good customer relations, you need the good clients, you need the referrals. We don’t know where will be working next.

Do you both like doing ferries and cruise ships?RN: I think ferries are the most chal-lenging. For example on the Irish Sea you have two million people traveling per year; cruise ships you have 1,200 or 3,000 people captured for a week and they can’t move. On a ferry they might be there for one, two hours and then they go … the challenge is to make them want to go back, when they get off the ship to say “I liked the journey”.

MS: You don’t have a great deal of time to deliver the experience. So I guess now we have created the condi-tions for that experience to be delivered, or to be improved from where it was before. You’ve got only a few hours from

the time passengers get on board until they go to bed, and very little time the next morning. So you need to package something that is deliverable in that period of time, and it has to be good. I think now that the ships provide that sort of environment. From our side, now we are fine-tuning the operations, the delivery of the service, making adjust-ments when they are needed.

One of the biggest challenges of ferry operation like this is the embarkation and disembarkation process, and how to integrate the unavoidable logistics of boarding cars and passengers with the on-board experience. RN: The journey starts when you say ‘yes’ on the website, I think. So it’s very important that all the way through, all the chains, are addressed from a design point of view and a management point of view, to make the most of the trip. The experience of the whole things is important.

AR: It is very unusual for a ferry line to do its whole fleet in one go. This was as much a part of a relaunch of the whole service, not just the ships. New uniforms for the crew, new food, new website, new presentation – and it re-ally was unusual: normally it would be staged over several years if the fleet’s bigger, certainly maybe one one year and the other the next year. It’s a big undertaking and in some ways a big risk, putting all the eggs in one basket.

MS: We saw a lot of bad examples of ships that were refurbished just in certain areas and you really see the difference … I don’t think it’s a great experience. Unless things are planned properly and you have a plan to refur-bish over a set period of time … we saw ships where some parts just weren’t touched. It doesn’t look right, it doesn’t feel right. That’s why we wanted to touch the whole product: you walk on board and it’s a refreshed product everywhere.

AR: The crew really embraced the whole process, not only the refit but the investment that’s gone back into their brand, their business. A different approach to customer service, differ-ent food, different facilities, and they’ve been fantastic. The vast majority of the crew come from the northern part of Tasmania. So there is definitely a brand ownership, a community spirit and an interest that flows through, and also so many of the people we had working on the ship during the refit came from the

local community. It’s an island state: they have an in-

vestment in that ferry line as part of the service and part of the state. Everyone has pride in where they are and where they’re working – that was accentuated this time by the locality; can’t not be in Devonport … when a SPIRIT vessel is moored up it’s such a dominant part of the local community.

RN: It’s very hard to come into peo-ple’s home and say ‘that has to go here, that has to go over there’. So they (the crew) have to be involved.

MS: Certainly the project was em-braced by a lot of people internally. We spent a lot of time talking to people on board about the changes. There must be some sense of ownership, a great involvement from everyone. The overall structure of the ship works very well now in terms of service delivery.

What’s next?RN: We do both land-based and marine business, like 50:50. Land is really hot right now but we’re doing a couple of small projects for Stena Line and a secret big project!

AR: From our side it never stops. While this has been going on we’ve completed a couple of military projects, we’ve done three small refits on explor-er cruise ships, and we’re just entering the main refit season with Disney, Aza-mara, Thomson, some large contracts and we’re also quoting on some quite large ferry contracts as well.

In some respects it’s unfortunate that this would seem to have been a tre-mendously successful project but it is on the wrong side of the world. What else is there down here to do?RN: You have New Zealand …

AR: On the ferry side it’s a relatively small market, but there’s cruise, there’s the military, cruising in the Australasian region is becoming more and more im-portant and will continue to grow.

RN: Stena Line did the refurbish-ment of STENA ALEGRA (KAIARAHI) in Singapore, for chartering. Stena Line has many ships .. we did a couple of pro-posals last year for people who would charter them, this could be interesting for Trimline too.

AR: We are a global contractor. We are currently running projects in Spain, the UK, small ones out here still, the Bahamas, you have to be prepared to operate where the customer will take you.

spirit of tasmania I & II

2015

conversion of two passenger ferries3 decks all new design

+46 31 [email protected]

YOUR PARTNER IN SUCCESSFUL DESIGNS!


When Tasmania’s TT Line bought the Attica Group ro-paxes SUPERFAST III and

SUPERFAST IV in 2002 it was a game-changer for Australia’s island state.

For the first time the state gov-ernment-owned company could offer overnight Bass Strait crossings each way between Devonport and Melbourne 365 days of the year, with additional day sailings during peak periods.

The renamed SPIRT OF TASMA-NIA II and SPIRIT OF TASMANIA I, respectively, also play a vital role in the island’s freight sector, offering the latest departures and earliest arrivals in a market also contested by the freight-only Toll and SeaRoad groups.

But while TT Line has the Bass Strait sea passenger business to itself it also has to deal with contrasting require-ments: the southbound market is very

heavily weighted in favour of Tasmania’s burgeoning tourism while northbound the service plays a commuter role for residents travelling to mainland Austral-ia. The expectations of the two sets of customers can be completely different.

And while TT Line (originally derived from Transport Tasmania) oper-ates on a fully commercial basis and at arm’s length from its sole shareholder it is nevertheless subject to the whims and policies of the state government of the day, often driven by election-focussed politics that can provide unwarranted distraction.

Nevertheless, on 2 December last year the current Liberal government approved the TT Line board’s business plan for a $31.8 million total refurbish-ment of the passenger decks of the two SPIRITs, which had remained largely unchanged since their Mediterranean days.

At the same time – with the refits of both vessels taking place virtually con-currently, on one vessel during routine drydocking while on the other while still in (reduced) service – TT Line has taken the opportunity to relaunch and refresh the SPIRIT OF TASMANIA brand, in a co-ordinated campaign that dovetails explicitly with the Tasmanian Government’s push to increase visitor numbers to the state by almost half.

A record 988,000 people visited Tas-mania for the financial year to end-June 2015, with international tourists up 22% and the local market growing 13%. But in a state that has traditionally lagged behind the rest of the nation in employ-ment and business activity, at least in part thanks to its relative isolation, tourism is seen as the way of the future and the gov-ernment has set an ambitious target of attracting 1.5 million visitors per annum, drawn by Tasmania’s natural beauty and clean green reputation, by 2020.

The massive task of achieving the rebirth of the SPIRITs and realising TT Line’s role in accomplishing the gov-

“PROBABlY THE BEsT RO-PAXEs in THE WORld nOW”INTERVIEw wITH TT LINE’S CEO BERNaRd dwYERTEXT: dAlE CRisP

SPIRIT OF TASMANIA I ANd IIBefore the conversion After the conversion

Deck 7 Deck 7

One cinema Two professional standard cinemas

Captain’s Table cafeteria style restaurant Tasmanian Market Kitchen self-service signature dishes

Leatherwood a-la-carte restaurant The Pantry snacks, supplies and Tasmanian products

Tasmania at Sea souvenir shop The Reading Room

Reception/Purser’s desk/staff offices Reception/Purse’s desk/staff offices (re-located)

Children’s Playroom Bar 7

Star Club gaming lounge/bar admirals Gaming Lounge

Tourism on Board Tourism Hub (re-located)

Lavender Café Flavours of Tassie sampling station

Horizon Bar

Deck 8 Deck 8

Ocean Recliners New Ocean Recliners (and reconfigured lay-out)

Deck 9 Deck 9

deck 9 bar and kiosk Terrace Lounge Bar – live acoustic entertainment

Games arcade Games Zone

Deck 10 Deck 10

due South bar & kiosk Top deck Lounge & Bar, with activities and performers

Children’s Play area

Gaming Station

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ernment’s aims falls to the company’s executive team, led by chief executive officer Bernard Dwyer.

Mr Dwyer took up his new role last November, having previously been director of tourism at Tasmania’s Fed-eral Group, the state’s leading operator of hotel-casinos, resorts and boutique accommodation. Before that he was a management consultant with KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In his Federal capacity Mr Dwyer for many years had also been a non-executive director of the TT Line board, a position he relinquished when taking over as CEO. His appointment, several months after the departure to a toll-road company of previous chief Charles Griplas, was widely welcomed by the tourism sector.

SHIPPAX CFI spoke to Bernard Dw-yer on board the transformed SPIRIT OF TASMANIA I.

A TAsMAniAn sHOWCAsEWith limited ability to increase capacity on and frequency of night-time sailings

TT Line’s strategy for the SPIRITs is to offer more daytime crossings, all year round.

“This refit is all about carrying the same number on board, but with more day sailings we will carry more over 12 months than we’ve ever been able to do,” Mr Dwyer said. “That was the only area for growth available: We couldn’t put on any more evening sailings, we’re flat-out all year. In the winter months it’s always tougher to fill of course, and we sell out car spaces before we fill with passengers.

“So, for example, the recliner lounge area is really nice now and we’re making sure they’re available all year round so that provides a boost to numbers. The vehicle decks’ passenger/freight mix is 60/40 and has been for a few years now: the additional day sailings will in effect give us more passenger car/caravan/mo-bile homes capability, because not a lot of freight will travel on the day sailings. There will be 105 day sailings this year.

“We need to be really careful be-cause the service we offer, particularly for perishable freight from Tasmania, is based on us being last to leave Devon-port and first to arrive in Melbourne (and vice versa). That enables us to get freight from the south of the state to the north of the state on any day and then onboard for that all-important early Melbourne arrival. As I understand the new SeaRoad vessel [now under con-struction at Flensburg and due for deliv-ery in late 2016] will still not be as fast as the SPIRIT vessels so we still need to fill that need in the freight market,” Mr Dwyer said.

“The high season in freight is the high season in passengers, and the low season in freight is also the low season

in passengers, unfortunately, so it’s re-ally lumpy. That’s why we’ve previously done day sailings in the high season, to make sure we take every passenger we possibly can. Sometimes not all the freight can get on – not only with our-selves but also Toll and Searoad – but normally by the end of the week freight is cleared out of Tasmania.”

Despite the increased emphasis on tourists, the government has asked TT Line not to reduce the amount of freight - but nor have they asked the company to increase the freight, either.

“They want us to maintain the current split, without change of that em-phasis – but they do want us to be much more of a tourist entity. This one-and-a-half million people into Tasmania by 2020 is sacrosanct for the government.

Bernard Dwyer

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The Pantry Tourism Hub


It’s not only us driving that, it’s the Tourism Council, T21 [a government/in-dustry partnership that has prepared the Tasmanian Visitor Economy Strategy 2015-2020), other bodies, who recognise that we need to set a new visitor base for the state.

“We’re so proud of turning the whole ship(s) into a Tasmanian show-case. You’ve got nine hours or three hours [‘active time’ on board during day and night crossings, respectively] … for people travelling to Tasmania this is the start of their holiday. It doesn’t really start when the get to Tasmania, it starts as soon as they board our ship. “It’s a bit different for Tasmanians coming to Victoria, because it’s a way for them to get off the island.

“But their early reaction has been great. People love the open spaces, they’re loving the fact that we’ve im-proved the food content, especially. The new food offering really caters for the full gamut of passenger requirements and we’ll fine-tune it over time … I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

How did TT Line set a budget for this? Did it create a wish list and then go to the market to see what it would cost and what was achievable?

“We did the research on what cus-tomers actually wanted on a service like ours. We matched that with our ideas on how we could improve that service to attract more visitation to Tasmania,” he said. “Our people have been looking at this over a couple of years, looking in Europe at similar operations, to under-stand what the overall business case might be and then to formulate the right mix.

“This is all about getting people to travel a second, third and fourth time,

rather than they come once and then go some other place. There was a lot of discussion over many, many months over how it should look, what are the facilities we need to improve, what more can we offer.

“Once the government approved the business case things moved very quickly. We were really raring to go: if they wanted us to do it, if they allowed us to do it, we needed to have this ready to go so we could have it completed before the high season. We knew roughly what the costs were going to be and we’ve been pleasantly surprised that it’s come in on time and on budget.

“This is probably the best ro-pax in the world now, from a passenger com-fort point-of-view.

The inevitably legacy of buying sec-ond-hand vessels is that there are carry-over aspects of their previous life. But now TT Line has ‘created its own ships’. The transformation is stunning and the attention to detail is very impressive.

“And there is still more to go. I come out of a background of running hotels and you’ve got to have your eye on the detail, absolutely. Going forward it will be more of a hotel operation … this is about the customer experience, the guest experience, and showcasing Tas-mania at every opportunity.

“It’s a very functional transforma-tion, though, that hasn’t required any increase in human resources in terms of hospitality staff; we’ve just moved people around so that the focus has shifted from all on Deck 7 to Decks 9 and 10 which, I agree, were previously wastelands.

“There’s a spring in the step of our crew, who have been just fantastic. The amount of work that they’ve done and

the way they’ve gone about it over the last three weeks in particular is astound-ing, it’s just fantastic. We’ve improved their home: new uniforms, refurbished crew cabins, a whole new work en-vironment. They have contributed a tremendous amount of input. Certainly from an operational perspective: they’ve said “Have you thought about this, you should be doing that” … the buy-in has been tremendous. And we listened to them.” Sometimes you have to set the plan and get on with it, nevertheless, Mr Dwyer said.

We’re well aware that we might not get this right in the first three or four sailings, this may take time. But let me give you an example: I was involved in setting up Saffire [Saffire Freycinet five-star resort, a winner of multiple national and international awards, located on Tasmania’s East Coast] and I reckon we changed the breakfast menu and service five times until we got it right. And that’s what I’ve said to the guys here: at first you mightn’t get it right, you might need to change things. But let’s do it.

“Let’s change things based on the customer feedback, and we’re putting the mechanisms in for that right now. We’re investigating putting in a system I’ve used before, where rather than hop-ing you might fill out some form we’ll be sending out instant emails saying ‘here’s all the information, please let us know’. In some cases you’ll actually receive that email even before you get off the vessel. That’s what you’ve got to do, if you’re going to take feedback seriously and honour it.”

THE CEO As A CUsTOMERMr Dwyer is intent on sifting through every part of the customer experience to

Left and right: Tasmanian Market Kitchen (TMK)


improve it.“I live in Hobart and I work in

Devonport and Melbourne. So I drive to Devonport on Monday, and I usually cross to Melbourne on the ferries on the Monday or Tuesday night and reverse the journey later in the week. So I’m sampling the product all the time.

“I’ve been able to give feedback to the leadership team: I sit in the queue, in the car, like everyone else. Why am I not getting practical boarding informa-tion? You say it’s on the ticket, it’s all there, but I don’t hear that from custom-ers … what’s wrong with getting the guy that actually puts you in the queue from saying “Oh, by the way, this queue may board at a different time than that one,

don’t worry about that, these are the reasons”.

“It’s a daunting task to take your car on a vessel if you’ve never done it before. There is so much happening around you that you can easily be bewildered. People don’t know what a quarantine inspection is, how it happens or why. It can be intimidating. We’re starting to go through all those things.

“Moving the quarantine proce-dures from Devonport to Melbourne

has already improved the experience enormously. Not only are we confiscat-ing a lot more material than was ever taken in Tasmania but the experience in Devonport is now that you’re just about straight off and away: there’s no hold-up for your holiday. “And that’s the way it should be.”

At the time of this interview day sail-ings bookings were already up 127% on the same time last year, partly, of course, because of the additional voyages on

“It’s a daunting task to take your car on a vessel if you’ve never done it before”

Bernard dwyer

Atlantic extra high back with leg rest and reading light.


offer – but the company has never had people book so far in advance at this time of the year.

“I can’t say that it’s all of our market-ing and all of our messages in the market that have generated this, to be honest, because Tassie is on a bit of a tourism resurgence, there’s no doubt about that. What we’re aiming to do is facilitate that and contribute as much as we can.

“But the marketing campaign around the refurbishment has been remark-able for its success, especially on social media. The first video we put out had something like 40,000 hits in two weeks, absolutely unheard of for any-thing we normally put out. And that’s kept going as people have followed our progress.

“Part of our branding effort is to increase our customers’ knowledge of what we do and how we do things. It’s the social media equivalent of getting that guy in the queue to tell you more, so you’ve got the knowledge.

Is TT Line going to be judged solely on passenger numbers it brings into the

state? What about the strict commercial reality of running two 29-knot vessels flat-out across an often-unforgiving Bass Strait each-way twice a day – not exactly a cheap operation?

“If you’re putting an extra 33 day sailings on per year you’re wearing the vessels out that much faster, so we will be increasing our preventative main-tenance to ensure these vessels can do that for the longer term. There’s no impediment in the government’s mind as to how we operate the business, Mr Dwyer stressed.

If your profits decline because of the way you’re operating the vessels, but you passenger numbers increase, is that an acceptable result for the govern-ment?

“It probably is an acceptable result for the government but it’s not accept-able to me or my executive team. We pride ourselves on running a profitable business. We need to know we’re run-ning it in a way that generates the capi-tal to [eventually] replace these vessels. I can’t do that if we’re making losses.

“The only direction I’ve been given by the government is, we need to in-crease our passenger numbers to assist with that 1.5 million goal, and we don’t expect you to carry any less freight than you’re carrying now. We’ve also said we’ll reduce fares by 14.8% over four years and we’re on track for that now.

“Am I confident that’s sustainable? It has to be. It will be a combination of increasing the utilisation of our vessel and increasing our ‘share of wallet’ of our passengers. It really is a numbers game.”

As for TT Line’s most obvious com-petition, Mr Dwyer believes the airlines are really in a different market. “From time-to-time they flood with $49 fares and that makes a bit of difference at the margins but we market ourselves as a different product: you take your vehicle and you travel around at your conven-ience in your time, not just fly-in fly-out.

“It’s far more romantic here now, the whole sea thing – just look around you!”

DeLuxe Suite

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NOVA STAR SPIRIT OF TASMANIA CARONTE & TOURIST PEN … · Nova Star Cruises’ website proudly exclaims that the NOVA STAR offers, “The fun of a cruise…The convenience of a ferry!”