Travel + Leisure World Best River Cruises—the Confusion Continues!
Hank Schrader, USMA '71, Europe Destination & Europe River Cruise Expert
Anne Schrader, Certified Travel Counselor & Certified Luxury Cruise Specialist
Every year numerous travel publications send out their lists of what their readers say from a survey or by their own ratings. While I always find their results interesting, they should have little meaning to you. Why? The pie-in-the-sky lists seldom match what matters to you most for a river cruise trip.
As we always say (the caps are intentional) ALL RIVER CRUISES ARE A GREAT VACATION!
Perhaps the range of scores of Travel + Leisure for their list of the 10 best river cruise lines between #1 and #10 is 98.85 to 90.09 supports this statement—90% is an A or 5 star in most rating systems.
Instead of providing our take on the ratings, I decided to provide you with some background information on the lines we do not follow and report on the scores provided.
It is critical thinking time—let’s explore the results together.
Travel + Leisure World Best Lists
Travel + Leisure just came out with their annual World Best Lists last week (12 July 2024). Best lists always rank high in readership, as folks seek the best and often turn a blind eye to the results. This is especially true for travel ratings. So, I just can’t resist examining the results with regard to our specialty—river cruises.
Methodology
According to the magazine “Over 186,000 T+L readers completed the 2024 survey. A total of more than 700,000 votes were cast across over 8,700 properties (hotels, cities, cruise lines, etc.).”
For the cruise category, respondents were asked to rate individual ships; the results were combined to generate scores for cruise lines in different categories based on number of cabins.
Ships were specifically rated on the criteria: 1) Cabins/facilities; 2) Food; 3) Service; 4) Itineraries/destinations; 5) Excursions/activities; and 6) Value.
For each characteristic, respondents could choose a rating of excellent, above average, average, below average, or poor. The final scores are averages of these responses.
I must admit, for the life of me, how they got such precise mathematical scores from 6 rating categories with 5 possible scores and convert them into a 100 based score with 2 decimal places is beyond me. I’m sure a mathematician who specializes in statistics knows the answer, but it does make me wonder how the results were tabulated. A second factor is the lack of transparency about how many actually voted in the overall category of river cruises.
Please remember, all these lists have no actual peer review as you might see in scientific articles but I realize this will never happen as it would add to the complexity of the survey and it really boils down to an opinion survey from individuals who may or may not experienced many river cruise options—these great vacations just rate so highly, it is no wonder the comparisons are biased by limited experience with all available options.
Still, they are fun to read, vendors love them, and it does created increased readership and ad dollars. So that is why every year we get a new list to consider.
The River Cruise Ratings
There sure were a lot of possible rating categories the readers could report their ratings. Here is the list of their results for river cruise lines:
1. Aqua Expeditions 98.85
2. Avalon Waterways 95.91
3. Le Oberoi Cruises 95.75
4. Tauck 95.71
5. Grand Circle 95.61
6. Uniworld 94.83
7. Viking 94.73
8. Riverside 94.62
9. Scenic 91.00
10. AmaWaterways 90.09
Since we cover AmaWaterways, Avalon, Scenic, Tauck, Uniworld, and Viking (the only one we also follow is Emerald, which did not make this list) and have provided our take and rating on each line, I won’t rehash it here again. The game plan is to provide you with some background on the 4 other lines that made their list.
# 1 Aqua Expeditions 98.85
Aqua Expeditions has 3 ships that sail on the Amazon (32 guests), Galapagos (16 guests) and in Southeast Asia on the Aqua Blu (30 guests). The hype seems to be the 30 crew to 30 guest ratio on the Aqua Blu and the Travel + Leisure pointed to this—the service was over the top according to one example a survey respondent provided in the survey, as well as many more cited their exceptional service.
It is probably easy to understand why we don’t follow this line—it is really in the expedition niche, and we specialize in Europe River cruises.
How is it possible that a line with only 3 ships and so few guests gets enough votes to make it to number one in their list? Either the minimums are quite low, or customer comments pushed the line up. It is hard to evaluate this rating objectively.
# 3 Oberoi 95.75
Oberoi is a luxury hotel operator with 32 luxury hotels and 2 river ships. Both ships, the Zahra (27 cabins) and the Philae (22 cabins) sail only on the Nile River. It is hard for me to believe that with only 2 ships and limited staterooms, that many folks would rate it so high—makes you wonder how many votes it would require to be considered.
I don’t doubt it is luxury, but most newly built Egyptian River ships are equally luxurious, and these ships were built in 1996 and refurbished in 2015. I’m not exactly sure of how many newer ships have been added to the Nile River fleets of other lines, but it is more than 4—AmaWaterways and Viking have had their newer ships in service since 2015 and AmaWaterways just added a new Nile River ship in 2024.
# 5 Grand Circle 95.61
There is a good reason we don’t follow this line—they only allow direct bookings. Since they do not advertise at all and cite this as a reason they can provide lower cruise fares, they are often described as a less expensive way to enjoy the river cruise experience. In Europe, they offer routes on 5 different leased river cruise ships. Several river cruise lines use leased ships which are configured slightly by the operating cruise lines, but it does call into question maintenance of the vessels.
Grand Circle originally was founded by AARP (American Association of Retired People) and was purchase in 1958 by Alan Lewis and now is owned by a private equity firm Court Square Capital Travel. The line caters almost exclusively to North Americans.
Reviews online cite their education experiences during the cruise and rate them very high on this factor, but the reviews are all over the place about comfort and food.
The cabins are rather sparse compared to other lines. It is the only line to my knowledge that uses fold up beds (murphy beds)—not really my idea of the luxury experience that other lines who we follow provide their guest.
# 8 Riverside 94.62
Riverside has been in business for less than 2 years and has 3 ships sailing in Europe. Their first ship is the double wide Mozart which used to be part of the now bankrupt Crystal River Cruise line. The Mozart (162 guest cabins) can only sail on the Danube because of the size of the ship and locks on the Danube. They also leased from Uniworld two 135 m riverships that used to belong to Crystal. We got a chance to tour the Mozart in 2023 at the ASTA River Cruise Expo and eat dinner on the ship (I will expand on our experience this shortly in subsequent paragraphs of this section of the blog). The other two 135 ships are the Debussy and the Ravel (both 110 guest cabins). The Debussy sails the Rhine, the Main and the Moselle. The Ravel sails the Rhone and Saone.
The Palm Court on the Mozart
Anothe picture of the Palm Court
Portrait
The Riverside model is different in pricing as compared to other lines who we follow. The all-inclusive fare includes accommodations, meals & drinks and one excursion per destination. They also offer a full range of a la carte services which allows guests to pick only what services they desire to tailor their trip to their preferences.
It is interesting to me that in the Riverside brochure, 70 of the 112 the pages are about the ship and the onboard experience (they cover the staterooms, cuisine & dining, spa & fitness, and extensive descriptions of the Mozart and the other 2 ships). It has more large pictures of the 3 ships than any other brochure I have seen about river cruise lines.
All three ships have a Vintage Room specialty dining for an extra expense that is limited to 12 guests for evening dining pair with fine wines.
The Vintage Room on the Mozart
Some travel writers and travel professionals claim Riverside has the “best food on the rivers”. This certainly was not our experience in 2023. The dinner meal was not as good as other lines we have sailed on.
Salmon entree
My steak meal on the Mozart—the meat was very tough
I wrote a blog comparing meals on various lines during the 2023 River Cruise Expo in Budapest last year. If you would like to learn more about our experience (visit our river cruise blog archives on our website). I was told by one of their representatives the meal we had was somehow overbooked and that was the reason for the generally poor showing that many of us travel professionals experienced.
We later learned that the onboard chefs have complete autonomy in their menu planning without corporate input or mandates, so maybe they have overcome this first poor showing we experienced.
One of the other revelations about the line is that it is struggling to fill their ships—one writer stated there were only 28 aboard during her 4-day sailing. I just can’t help but wonder how it is included on the list—only 3 ships, not sailing at capacity, and only has been in business for a little under 2 years; how did it receive enough votes to be included on the 10 Best List?
For us, this new line may deserve future inspection from us to cover them. Later this year we will get this chance to sail on the Ravel and provide you with more details on our experience.
Our Final Thoughts
I hope you find this interesting and informative. Part of the problem is that all river cruises are good vacations, and readers often only have the chance to sail on one line and tend to rate it highly as a result.
This just goes to show how little value these ratings have for us—it is so much better to match your travel style to the vendors—don’t be swayed by these reports. We hope you enjoyed this report—it was fun and challenging writing it.
Even cruise lines and vacation recommendations from friends and family should not be your sole reason to choose a certain line—everyone has certain travel expectations and just because they enjoyed it, you may not. You should use a seasoned travel professional like us, with in-depth knowledge to help you find the right cruise for you that matches your travel style
Sometimes, it is plain cool to visit sites that are important to you and try and imagine what it was like during that era.
We are travel experts, ocean and river cruise specialists, and Europe destination experts. We have first-hand knowledge of almost anywhere you want to visit in Europe. We know our products and the vendors who sell them to you. We have designed special tours for dozens of clients, led several and will continue to find just the right vacation that will exceed your expectations.
When you are spending your hard-earned money for a vacation, you want an advisor who can match you with the right trip. You want someone who will understand your expectations and fuel your anticipation (or excitement) to get you the best possible trip experience. And, you want someone who can help you with the decision making process. We think we have all these qualities.
Whatever your Dream Destinations are, we are here to help you get the best possible vacation based on what is important to you! We will provide you high quality, expertly planned travel. Please give me a call 713-397-0188 (Hank) or email me at hschrader@visitdd.com . We want to help you: Savor life…make memories…Visit Dream Destinations! Your journey begins here!
ANNE has earned a degree from the University of Houston in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Serving as the President of Visit Dream Destinations, LLC, since 2016, she is uniquely experienced professional travel advisor with over 26 years’ experience in the travel industry. Among her numerous certifications, she is a Certified Travel Counselor (CTC) by the Travel Institute, considered the gold standard in travel agent certification and she is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC) by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), as well Luxury Cruise Specialist also from CLIA. Having traveled often to Europe since 1989, she has expanded on her certification as a Destination Specialist in Western Europe (DS) with extensive first-hand experience in luxury vacations. She holds numerous other specialty designations from individual vendors. An expert photographer, she delights in capturing the true essence of destinations to share with all.
HANK is a certified Western European Destination Specialist (DS) who has been traveling to Europe for 53 years. He is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC), conferred by the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA). This recognized expert in cruise and leisure travel is a retired Army Officer, and taught World Geography for 8 years. He is a `71 graduate of West Point and has earned 2 master’s degrees. His other Certifications:
AmaWaterways River Cruise Specialist
Viking River Cruise Specialist
Scenic River Cruise Specialist
Emerald Waterways Specialist
Avalon Waterways Specialist
Brit Agent
