On the 10th April at Seatrade Cruise Global 2024, Windstar Cruises President Christopher Prelog announced that Windstar would be acquiring two new ships. I found the word ‘acquired’ to be quite interesting as it implied these were not new build ships.
It turns out that Windstar has purchased two ships that were originally intended for Atlas Ocean Voyages. One of the ships will be a new build, this ship will be known as Star Seeker and will start sailing with Windstar in December 2025. The other ship which is of the same design, is the World Explorer and currently sails on a charter agreement with Quark Expeditions. After a refit it will debut for WIndstar Cruises in December 2026.
The arrival of these two new ships will see the Windstar fleet increase from 6 to 8 ships, a significant uplift in fleet capacity. Star Seeker and Star Explorer will accommodate upto 224 guests in 112 suites.
According to Windstar each of the new ships will boast a Yacht Club cafe, lounge, watersports platform and a two-storey spa.
It appears this deal was done very recently as Windstar have not provided us with any pictures of the interior spaces or suites. I will be sure to keep everyone updated as more details emerge.
The acquisition of these ships will give Windstar the option to offer expedition cruises
We won’t know about any itineraries until June 2024, but Windstar have revealed acquisition will allow the company to deploy the Wind Star in Tahiti alongside the Star Breeze. To me this suggests one of the new ships will take on existing cruises that were planned for the Wind Star.
Whilst the two ships have ice-strengthened hulls, allowing them to sail in the polar regions, there hasn’t been an announcement that Windstar will start offering expedition cruises. In one of the 3D renderings supplied by Windstar we can see ice floating in the water, suggesting expedition cruises may be on the cards in the future. However to do that Windstar would have to build out an expedition team.
Hopefully there will be new itineraires
I am interested to see if Windstar will utilise these new ships to offer more exciting cruises. Right now the planned cruises from 2024 through to 2026 aren’t very exciting, there are a lot of Caribbean, Tahiti and Mediterranean cruises but no sailings in Alaska, Asia or beyond.
Other companies like Seabourn visit every continent with a whole range of voyages. Some of them visit very exotic locations like the Seychelles, Madagascar, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Easter Island. I want Windstar to follow in their steps and really give us some tantalising itineraries, to places where you have to look them up on a map. There is a limit to how many times you can cruise the Mediterranean or Caribbean, as cruisers we need to be given choice and fresh options.
