Giles Hawke, vice president of international, Celebrity Cruises said he hopes the line’s entrance into river cruise will grow the sector following concerns of Europe’s waterways becoming overcrowded by a new fleet of ships

Speaking at the CLIA RiverView Conference 2025 in Budapest on 8 March, Hawke believed the river sector as a whole will benefit when Celebrity Cruises launches its first-ever river fleet in 2027, saying he hopes it will bring new passengers and increased attention to the market.

Hawke said: “I think there’s room for all of us. I hope we’re going to grow the segment rather than just move passengers around.

“We do a huge amount of marketing. We’re spending a huge amount of money attracting people to cruise, we’re on TV all the time and we intend to keep doing that

“Once we’re ready to go on sale with our new ships, then we’ll bring all that marketing activity into [the river sector]. We’re going to bring new people into river cruising.”

The Royal Caribbean Group brand’s decision to expand into the river sector sparked fears that adding a further 10 ships to Europe’s waterways could lead to overcrowding, with the Rhine and the Danube both at high capacity during peak seasons.

However, Hawke was unconcerned by the prospect, adding: “The Danube is 2,800 kilometres long. The Rhine is 1,200 kilometres long. A couple more 200-metre ships really isn’t going to block up the rivers.”

“We have real respect for the river sector”

Celebrity Cruises has promised to bring the “quality and sophistication” of its Edge series ocean ships to its river fleet. While Hawke, who was recently promoted to the newly created role of vice president of international, was tight-lipped about what that would entail, he did reveal that the ships would feature a “transformative” upper deck.

“We think we’ve revolutionised what happens on the ocean. We have a real respect for what happens on the rivers, but we think we can do quite a lot.

“We know that over 50 per cent of our customers already either take river cruises or intend to. We’ve got 15 ocean cruise ships, so we’re taking over a million passengers every year. If 50 per cent of those people are already saying they want to go on river cruise, there’s a readymade market who love what cruising has to offer.”

Hawke was also questioned about the idea of Royal Caribbean Group brands Royal Caribbean and Silversea following suit and launching river fleets of their own, a prospect he didn’t rule out.

“We know that there’ll be a lot of Royal Caribbean and Silversea customers who want to take a Celebrity river cruise because we know there’s demand there as well. What may happen in the future, who knows? But for now, Celebrity Cruises is our focus for river.

“As our CEO Jason liberty said, we’re not going into river as a hobby. It’s going to be a serious part of our business.”

The three-day CLIA RiverView Conference continues this weekend with Riviera Travel, Amawaterways, Viva Cruises, Scenic and TUI River Cruises hosting agents for ship visits and overnight stays.

CLIA UK & Ireland managing director, Andy Harmer, revealed that 65 per cent of agents were attending the conference for the first time, while 25 per cent were new to selling river cruise.