Jun 24, 2026 · 23 min · 13 segments
Send us Fan Mail 172 - Thinking about a European river cruise but don't know where to start? With luxury and experiential travel bookings…
Kerri StuartHost
Rob StuartHost
And what they really did 16, 17 years ago is they put river cruising, specifically European river cruising on the map.

So much so that I easily have their slogan memorized, and that is, spend less time getting there and more time being there.

accent that was my mixed european accent okay that was interesting yes but that that is the slogan

something you heard all the time if you watched a show on pbs called downton abbey we did not but i'm impressed you have that memorized well it's

all the commercials and you know long story short we started looking at him like oh they're on we don't watch pbs technically we watch the travel stuff on pbs we never watched out now


So let's talk about, and we're going to break these down, who is Viking's target customer? Is really the line for the traveler who wants I will say, I'm going to say this in an interesting way, understated Scandinavian elegance.

No kids on board, which usually there aren't on river cruises, but Viking doesn't allow it.

So their cabins are going to be super clean and modern, very like a light airy aesthetic.

But their ships tend to hold more guests than the other river cruise lines, which means they have some cabins that are very, very small.

love viking they love the aesthetic they love how clean it is and here's kind of a fun fact their ship designs on the interior look identical across their entire fleet of river cruise ships so if you're on one ship and you go to the next one you may not realize that you were on a different ship

Well, and that's, again, excluding American Cruise Line, we go to a river cruise expo in Europe every year.

And so we've sailed on a lot of these, but we tour every single ship that is there.

And again, if you have two Viking ships side by side and they just take the name off, you have no idea which one you're getting on.

And what they really did 16, 17 years ago is they put river cruising, specifically European river cruising on the map.

So much so that I easily have their slogan memorized, and that is, spend less time getting there and more time being there.

accent that was my mixed european accent okay that was interesting yes but that that is the slogan

something you heard all the time if you watched a show on pbs called downton abbey we did not but i'm impressed you have that memorized well it's

all the commercials and you know long story short we started looking at him like oh they're on we don't watch pbs technically we watch the travel stuff on pbs we never watched out now


So let's talk about, and we're going to break these down, who is Viking's target customer? Is really the line for the traveler who wants I will say, I'm going to say this in an interesting way, understated Scandinavian elegance.

No kids on board, which usually there aren't on river cruises, but Viking doesn't allow it.

So their cabins are going to be super clean and modern, very like a light airy aesthetic.

But their ships tend to hold more guests than the other river cruise lines, which means they have some cabins that are very, very small.

love viking they love the aesthetic they love how clean it is and here's kind of a fun fact their ship designs on the interior look identical across their entire fleet of river cruise ships so if you're on one ship and you go to the next one you may not realize that you were on a different ship

Well, and that's, again, excluding American Cruise Line, we go to a river cruise expo in Europe every year.

And so we've sailed on a lot of these, but we tour every single ship that is there.

And again, if you have two Viking ships side by side and they just take the name off, you have no idea which one you're getting on.
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