Virgin Enters Cruise Buisness, Hires Former DCL President

[PortMickey]

Former Disney Cruise Line boss appointed CEO of Virgin Cruises start up

MIAMI, Florida - The Virgin Group has appointed Tom McAlpin, a former Disney Cruise Line President, as the Chief Executive of Virgin Cruises.

Tom McAlpin will join Virgin Cruises as part of the founding management team at the cruise line start up, which is to be based in Miami.

Virgin Group has also named Bain Capital as the main financial backers for the US $1.7-billion project.

Virgin chief executive Sir Richard Branson said back in March that the cruise line will start with two new ships rather than purchasing existing tonnage.

Branson said at the time he plans to "shake up the cruise industry," as his Virgin Group has done with aviation, communications, trains and finance.

"Cruise guests deserve something better and different to what is being offered today," said McAlpin at a press conference in Miami, echoing his Group CEO's words. "Opportunities like this do not come often, so I am very excited to lead this business and introduce the Virgin brand to the cruise industry".

Virgin Group is already known as a pioneering company in the transportation industry, operating trains, planes and, in the near-future, spaceships under the Virgin brand umbrella.

According to a press release issued by Virgin Group, its new Virgin Cruises brand will be operational before the end of the decade, although a hard date for the first cruise departures was not forthcoming.

"We plan to shake up the cruise industry and deliver a holiday that customers will absolutely love," said Sir Richard Branson, echoing the sentiment expressed when Virgin Atlantic Airways was launched in 1984.

Despite the rampant growth seen by the cruise industry in the last two decades, Virgin Cruises will be the first major start up in the cruise market in in almost 20 years. The last new comer, Disney Cruise Lines, commenced operations in 1996.

Unlike Disney Cruise Line, which cornered a family cruise market niche, Virgin Cruises will be taking on industry stalwarts Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line directly.

The new ships will be "more informal, fun, sexy, hip and cool" than those operated by the three largest cruise lines Evan Lovell, a partner at Virgin Management Limited, told the New York Times.

 

[OKW Lover]

Looking forward to seeing what Virgin's product is like.

 

[Scalemaster34]

Meet Tom once at an event at the Yacht Club... was a nice personable person. And I think it was under his leadership that the Dream and Fantasy were put into production.

While Karl seems to be doing a good job with the business end of making money for Disney. I would really like to see Disney doing more in the way of expanding the fleet, or making sure the older ships have replacements.

 

[AquaDame]

Definitely going to keep my eye on this... as a family of two adults I'm hopeful another line can pull off high quality without the (too) high price tag.