Renaissance Cruises

Without a doubt, the highlight of my career thus far, has been joining Renaissance Cruises. In 1996 after I reached my 21st year at sea, I decided to take a year off to explore shore-based opportunities. After three months as a Real Estate agent in South Florida, I became General Manager of two of the Koolik Groups Real Estate firms: Palm Point, Inc. of Boca Raton, and Tropic Point, Inc. of Deerfield Beach, where I stayed for about a year. Just when I started tiring of the 9 to 5 grind of “normal” life, I learned that a good friend, Captain A.S. Varsamis, had been appointed Port Captain of Renaissance Cruises.

Captain Varsamis was Master of the first ship I was Cruise Director on, which coincidentally was his first command as Captain. Throughout various stages of my career, I continued to sail with Captain Varsamis. He was always a very strict Captain, demanding the highest level of professionalism from those that served on his ships, but he was also the fairest and most reasonable Captain I ever had the pleasure of working for. I called to congratulate him on his new position and was invited to his office where I learned about the exciting new product and ships that were being developed for Renaissance Cruises.

Although Renaissance Cruises has been in existence for about ten years, they had sailed only small yacht-like vessels with a capacity of 120 guests. I learned that they were building four brand new larger vessels that would be unique to the cruise industry (since then the number of “newbuilds” has increased to eight!). The new ships would be the world’s first non-smoking fleet. Although 32,000 tons each, they would have a low capacity of 684 (almost half the amount our competitors would put on similarly sized vessels), and would be “country club casual” in the dress code and overall feel of the ships. The ships would also be unregimented for the guests, having only open seating in the four restaurants. Best of all, the ships would be low-key in the approach to onboard entertainment and activities. What I call the “day camp” atmosphere found on most ships would not exist on the “R Series” vessels, which as a Cruise Director is a big plus, for me anyway. These are just a few of the unique, and forward thinking approaches Renaissance has taken.