{"id":54963,"date":"2023-12-11T15:33:28","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T20:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/?p=54963"},"modified":"2023-12-11T15:33:35","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T20:33:35","slug":"river-cruising-not-too-exciting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/2023\/12\/river-cruising-not-too-exciting\/","title":{"rendered":"River Cruising: Not Too Exciting?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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AmaWaterways’ Ron Santangelo<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Last week, I spoke with one of my contacts at AmaWaterways. Ron Santangelo has been in the cruise business for quite some time. His career spans more than 50 years. Mine spans more than 30. Over the course of those years, we crossed paths many times. I was a writer for travel trade magazines. Ron was in executive positions for Cunard, Regency, Peter Deilmann and for the past decade, AmaWaterways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason for this story is something that Ron said to me during our phone call last week. AmaWaterways is the best company I have ever worked for, he told me. That’s quite a statement from someone who headed up Cunard. He said that during the pandemic AmaWaterways laid off no one. He said the company has no \u201cmortgages\u201d on its ships and, as I have noted over the years in countless articles, AmaWaterways always strives to under-promise and over-deliver. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was good for me to hear this from someone inside the company. It validated the fact that I chose AmaWaterways for my Dream Cruise. It also validated that we so often recommend a good river cruise company to people who ask for our help. We should note that in the same competitive set we also recommend Avalon Waterways, a company that also does well by its employees and guests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2009, when Ron came on board with AmaWaterways, we published a Q&A with him. Here’s an excerpt from that Q&A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: <\/strong>How did you get involved with river cruising?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A:<\/strong> I remember doing a press conference in 1991. I was the senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Cunard, and I announced that Cunard was going to be representing the Peter Deilmann river vessels. No one could understand what Cunard was up to. We all had of our bases covered, but what we were missing was the rivers, and no one, of course, at that time was even aware that we were missing something, because river cruising was unknown. It was something that the Europeans did and embraced from the mid-80s. That was the first introduction and I must say it wasn\u2019t well received because people couldn\u2019t connect the dots. They couldn\u2019t understand why people would enjoy cruising on a river. It sounded not too exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine that. People once thought river cruising was not too exciting. How times have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more from our archives: Q&A: AmaWaterways\u2019 Ron Santangelo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I spoke with one of my contacts at AmaWaterways. Ron Santangelo has been in the cruise business for quite some time. His career spans more than 50 years. Mine spans more than 30. Over the course of those years, we crossed paths many times. I was a writer for travel trade magazines. Ron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54963"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54965,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54963\/revisions\/54965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}