Saga published it’s preliminary results to year ended 31st January 2017
Cruising remains essential to Saga’s brand and customer offering. Our two cruise ships, the Saga Sapphire and Saga Pearl II, had another good year, with exceptionally high customer satisfaction levels.
We have significantly improved the yield management of our ships. While load factors have reduced marginally to 82%, we have increased the per diem rates by 8% through various value enhancements to the cruise product offering, including free wine with lunch and dinner, a newly established cruise services team and other enhancements to the customer experience.
We also continued to invest in the resilience of the cruise ships, with the scheduled maintenance of the Saga Sapphire during the year impacting profit by c.£5m, as expected.
Also in 2017, we will finalise the design details of our first purpose built ship. We have today announced that the name of our fantastic new ship is to be Saga’s “Spirit of Discovery”. We will start selling cabins later this year for her first season, summer 2019 but we’re already seeing strong pre-registrations from customers who want to be amongst the first to cruise on her.
(Saga)
