For the 2025 travel season CroisiEurope, the France-based river cruise operator, is offering some new destinations and itineraries, as well as some exclusive departures for the U.S. market. The company is introducing new cruise itineraries in Belgium, the Netherlands and India.
These three new entries are added to CroisiEurope’s roster of some 170 itineraries on 50 ships in 37 countries, stretching across Europe, the Mediterranean, Northern and Southern Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.
It’s a Style
What ties these diverse destinations together in this product line is a style of travel. It’s the river cruise style with variations. The company also offers smaller and slower barges on canals, and some cruises on open sea and coastal waters. They are variations on the river cruise theme, all small ship experiences, and destination-focused more than ship activity focused.
The basic model for river cruising is followed by a number of river cruise operators in a competitive field. The various operators follow the same basic template of river cruising that has evolved through survival of the fittest in the marketplace over the past few decades. But they are all as different from each other as are different parties thrown by different people in different houses.
When it comes down to the basic itineraries and activities, that is where an individual brand expresses itself.
CroisiEurope is a French company, offering the joie de vivre experience in a way that only the French can.
Intimacy with the Destination
Unlike the megaship culture that is all about enticing features, activities and entertainment onboard ship, river cruising is more destination-focused. This is generally true of the river cruise market, but how each company curates and designs its itineraries is an individual matter.
According to Sandrah Gurash, Croisieurope’s general manager for North America, the central concept of the CroisiEurope package is immersion in the culture and the landscape of the destination.
The key to enabling immersion is a highly refined level of service, giving passengers the comfort and freedom to explore and absorb the changing environment as the vessel cruises across the landscape.
The staff members are trained to incorporate hospitality, reactivity, availability, and professionalism in their treatment of passengers.
Immersion and river cruising fit together hand-in-glove, on a river cruise you move across the landscape via the ancient arteries of transportation and shipping. You are on the water, so it’s an aquatic experience, and yet you never leave the landscape behind. It is near you all along the way.
Conveniently, your accommodation moves with you, which is perhaps the single most brilliant element of the river cruise experience. It’s certainly at the top of the list in terms of convenience. It’s phenomenal to be able to stretch out and make yourself at home while you are actually traveling across the countryside.
The “only pack once” element is shared with the megaship cruise lines but, with a river cruise, it has more impact on the experience. On a river cruise, you are inland, in close proximity to the landscape, which changes constantly as you glide by. You are able to go in and out from ship to shore often and easily. You are never far from the land. On a river cruise, you develop an intimacy with the destination that is hard to beat with any other mode of transportation.
Getting the Word Out
CroisiEurope still has a fairly low brand profile in the crowded U.S. river cruise market, but Sandrah Gurash says that recognition in the states is growing.
Known primarily as a river cruise operator, the company also offers barge canal cruises, lake cruises and ocean cruises.
Among this year’s additions to the product line, in Belgium, CroisiEurope has introduced new barge trips on a 22-passenger canal barge. This is part of the movement in Europe in recent decades to repurpose tourism barges that were one of the main transportation systems for transporting goods around Europe, before the rise of trains and trucks.
The refurbished and upgraded barges, as well as newly built ones, now serve as cozy vessels for a leisurely, up-close exploration of the European landscape along canals that were originally built as the highways of trade.
The barges provide a nice, moving accommodation as you crawl through beautiful landscapes; towns and villages, experiencing the wine, cheeses and culinary specialties typical of each locality. It’s a fabulous way to travel and dig deeply into the cultural landscape of a particular region.
In the Netherlands, the company is offering lake cruises on Ijsselmeer, a great manmade lake in Northwestern Holland constructed by the all-time champion masters of water engineering, the Dutch. The lake was created by building a dam across the entrance to the old Zuiderzee area, turning it into the largest lake in Western Europe, 1,100 square meters in area. The Dutch, known for turning ocean areas into land, also turn land into lake.
The company is also returning to India, offering three departures of cruises on the sacred River Ganges in February and November 2025.
Exclusive U.S. Departures
For 2024, the company is offering a series of departures that are exclusive to the U.S. market. They include pre- or post-cruise stays.
Offering departures that are exclusive to the U.S. market enables the operator to gauge the experience specifically to the interests and needs of American travelers.
Also new for 2025, the Elbe Princesse II will be renamed MS R.E Waydelich and will be moved from the Elbe and Vltava rivers to the Rhine.
It’s a paddle wheel riverboat, which brings a different dimension to CroisiEurope’s menu of itineraries. The company is also offering paddle wheel boats on the Elbe and Loire rivers and claims the crown as the only river cruise line offering paddle wheel cruisers on those rivers.
Sandrah Gurash told me, “While we are the pioneer of river cruising in Europe and well known there, in North America I like to say we are the best-kept secret in river cruising. But we continue to see growth here. We offer a more immersive style of European river cruising with a very relaxed atmosphere on board. Our ships have a smaller more intimate feel.”
With this company, traveling in its immersive style, you can travel through Belgium on a barge, through Holland on an intimate river cruiser, on the Danube across Europe, on the Mekong in Indochina, on the Ganges in India, on the Chobe River and Lake Kariba between Zambia and Zimbabwe, on the Nile in Egypt.
I asked Sandrah why a traveler should choose CroisiEurope over the many competitors in the river cruise market. She was quick to give a very comprehensive answer.
“We offer a more immersive European experience with a mix of French and international guests,” she said. “Our ships are on the smaller side for today’s river cruising, providing a more intimate, relaxed setting. We are known to provide a fantastic value for money, being all-inclusive onboard and offering a refined French cuisine dining experience.”
Having honed its product line since the mid-‘70s, CroisiEurope brings some things to the marketplace that are exclusive to itself.
“We also have ships in our fleet that you won’t find with other lines,” she said, “paddle wheel river ships and canal barges, for example. And exclusive destinations – Loire, Guadalquivir, Lake Kariba, to name just a few. CroisiEurope was the first line on many of the waterways in France and Europe and we continue that pioneering spirit to new destinations.”
Half a Century
CroisiEurope is a real veteran in the river cruise business. The company was founded in 1976 by Gérard Schmitter and continues to be a family-run business, now operated by Schmitter’s second- and third-generation heirs.
In 2023 the company carried more than 175,000 passengers. The packages are all-inclusive. The ships are small and intimate, ranging from 16 passengers on board the RV African Dream and the RV Zimbabwean Dream, to 22 on canal barges, and up to 197 passengers on the MV La Belle de l’Adriatique.
River cruising is about the most highly evolved way of producing a great travel experience at a given destination. With CroisiEurope you can combine the river cruise style of travel with the highly refined culture and joie de vivre of France. Once you try it, like many others, you may find it to be habit forming. That’s the key to CroisiEurope’s formula for success.
For more information, see https://croisieuroperivercruises.com/
For a peek at an electronic brochure of what is new, click here.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.