Holland Norway Lines

[ccs]

New shipping route linking Eemshaven in the Netherlands with Kristiansand in Norway. 3 round trips per week with departures at 14.00 and arriving at 9.00. The ship mentioned on their website is Tallink's Romantika.
https://hollandnorwaylines.com/

[ccs]

Romantika made her first sailing yesterday. Short tour of the ship here
https://lc.nl/extra/Neem-een-kijkje-op-de-ferry-van-Holland-Norway-Lines-27592328.html 

Holland Norway line website https://hollandnorwaylines.com/

[Ferriesbetterfastercheape]

Sadly this ferry-company is in financial-trouble now and the traffic is stopped actually.


Really really sad, i was really hoping that this route would be a permanent route for the future !
A route South-Norway - West-Germany/Netherlands is really a good route, but they have made some very big mistakes:

1) To charter very expensive a ferry for CIRCA 100,- per night and cabin (this is the price what all refugee-accomodations pay to Tallink - maybe HNL has got a little "long-time-discount" - but still much too much money). It would be much more cheaper to start with any other ferry BOUGHT and not chartered, maybe a little bit older or a little bit smaller - but this would be much much cheaper than to pay (speculated) 40.000,- , 50.000,- or 60.000,- per day... . In july/aug. this calculation can work - but not in winter.

2) They have much too much people, staff, crew ! 400 (!!!) for 1 ship only ??? That´s really mega-strange, crazy, not to believe ! This was already the big mistake from Tallink, they have had f.ex. super much 260 crew-people onboard of the sister-ferry Galaxy !
Viking Line f.ex. has much smaller crew, f.ex. most areas are cleaned daily from cheap cleaning-people in Stockholm, paid only for the less than 1 hour cleaning between arrival and departure. 

3) Crewmembers only from most expensive countries instead of to take a big part of cheapest crew from cheapest countries. If you want operate a CRUISE-ferry, than you need cheap crews as it is normal on 99% of all cruise-ships. Especially the Germany compare day and night all prices - f.ex. for ca. 600,- 1 week cruise incl. meals with Costa to Geiranger or 1, 2 nights on a ferry to Kristiansand ???

4) All the problems with the port, change of port etc. . Kristiansand-Emden is really a good route, but they need also 2 own connecting buses in Norway (A to Stavanger-Bergen and B to Larvik-Drammen-Oslo) and connecting buses in Germany and Netherlands.
Eemshaven was from the beginning a problem, much too small, much too far away from everything, and the port do not a ferry !
For foot-people from Norway it would be attractive to walk around 1 day in a bigger city in Holland or Germany and shopping there much cheaper than in Norway - but this was not possible in Eemshaven. Ask in the shoppinghouses and fashion-brand-stores in Kiel - they will confirm you that they have a lot of customers daily from Colors Oslo Ferry ! 
Strange that they have started the route without any support from the port also and without to have a longtime contract for the space in port ! Other ferry-ports as f.ex. Turku, Hanko, Langesund offers only symbolic fees for new ferry-routes with high Pax-capacity. Why they have not from the beginning asked in Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven, Emden ?

5) And the company-name was from the beginning not optimal, much too specific. And after the move to Emden they have forgotten to change the name from Holland to Germany. Think you are working in a travel-agency in Germany, every customer will ask "but, if this ferry goes from Emden, why the in name is "Holland". Any more neutral name would has been better, anything in direction "North Europe Ferries / Line" or something similar neutral short as SILJA, STENA, VIKING - with all options to start easy anytime in the future also other routes from Norway to UK or Germany f.ex. - and not only to Holland. They have copied the old name-mistake from Larvik Line... .

6) No cheap offers to fill the ship in winter with hundreds of minicruise-pensioneers daily, i have checked sometimes the prices f.ex. for minicruises in winter. Was always much much too expensive. Viking Line has often ticket incl. cabin for 20,- 30,- 40,- - but HNL was offering it for 100,- or much more - than most people stay better at home with the result of many many hundred free cabins daily onboard - but to pay are daily all the very high fix-costs !
Many 3, 4 star hotels in attractive regions in Germany offers in november cheapest prices for 30,- 40,- per night - who pay then much more than 100,- for ferry-boat ? Also no big marketing-cooperation, cheap cruises f.ex. with Costa, AIDA, Color Line and MSC i can book via cheapest supermarkets LIDL-reisen, Netto-reisen, ALDI-reisen etc. incl. millions of catalogues coming in every german household for free.
Have also not seen any special catalogues for bus-coach-tour-operators (5000 alone in Germany !) and really no special support for travel-agencies.

So there are 2 ways:
To operate with a mainly freight-based Ropax-ferry, then some few people will accept high ticket-prices also and fill the small number of cabins.
Or to operate with a big cruise-ferry, but then in winter supercheap prices and very good marketing are needed !
Otherwise many many hundred empty cabins daily and losses, losses, losses... .
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What happens now with the ferry ?
Tallink has already Victoria 1 laid off without route or charter, now Romantika also and soon will Atlantic Vision follow.

[ccs]

Holland Norway Lines declared bankrupt

https://www.niferry.co.uk/holland-norway-lines-declared-bankrupt/

[giftgrub]

A sad end to a promising start up, stunned to read how small the car deck is on the ferry they chartered, what were Tallink doing making a huge ferry with tiny car deck, not the right boat for the route.

[Ferriesbetterfastercheape]

Yes - the Romantika was not perfect for the route - but the biggest mistake was really the much much much to big personal-key... .

In the complete cruise- and ferry-business is no private company with a similar extremly big personal-key... .

To compare: On Tallinks Galaxy 1 was 260 people - which was already much too much, much more than f.ex. competitor Viking Line has with a big cleaning-team coming onboard only during the 1 hour port-stay in Stockholm, much much cheaper operation-costs to pay these people for 1 hour only than for 24 hours incl. free meals, drinks etc. onboard.
Therefore Tallinks operating-costs was too high and they have chartered out this ship.
But Galaxy 1 has 927 cabins - and Romantika "only" 727 !

So WHY WHY WHY on the much smaller Romantika 300 people onboard ???? 300 people for 727 cabins, from which in winter was ca. 550, 600 or more empty daily and 1 day every week no departure ! I guess that they don`t know the usually working-times and shift-system rules on cruise-ships - would be easy to operate Romantika very well with less than the half of the crew only (120, 130, 140 instead of 300) also.

And why 27 people on land in Norway ? For what please ? With an own company ???
Only what needed from Norway is 1 reception-lady onboard speaking Norwegian, working ca. 3 hours 8-11 at reception in the morning before arrival and 5 hours around / after departure, 16-17 at the ramp for to check the tickets from Norwegian customers (old people often do no speak english) and 17-21 at the reception (dep. was at 17:00). 2nd reception lady dutch for much cheaper salary/ wages, easy to find any from Netherlands (or also Norway) who speaks fluently german and english also.
Then 1 Norwegian in main-office (in Netherlands or Germany) for marketing in Norway, contacts to norwegian travel-agencies, norwegian tourist-coach-companies etc. "Key Account Manager". F.ex. TT Line has 1 person only since decades for all this work with 9 ferries on the german side.
And 1 Norwegian for all things and contacts around freight, logistics, contact to Norwegian truck-companies etc. in Norway.
And these 3 with mother-language Norwegian can also correct all Norwegian signs, flyers, brochures, websites etc. .

So all these high fix-costs in Norway are complete superflous ! There is no office need in Norway (with costs of monthly rent, cleaning-staff-costs, electricity, heating etc.), no registered company in Norway with all following costs of tax, adminstration etc. . And no staff in port ! So long there is no automooring they can rent cheap 2, 3 port-people for the tows for minutes only, maybe students, young pensioneers etc. - there are a lot of people with free time and like it watching if a big ship is arriving. And all other work on land (check-in lanes, marshalling etc.) can be automatically with traffic-lights as it is at Molslinjen, Forsea etc. or also can be done by crew-members.
 
Maybe not all here knows the super-high costs of Norwegians, a simple waitress or haidresser gets in Norway CIRCA 5000,- Euro per month !
In Germany only circa 2000,-, if teenager less. So every international operating company must take so less as possible people from Norway for to hold the costs down. Norway is a "half-socialistic" country with the highest taxes and company-costs worldwide, so if not absolute needed - start never to register any international operating company in Norway, rent never an office in Norway etc. !

And what are 46 people in the office in Netherlands doing every day every week ??? With the only 1 ship far away turning in Emden (Germany) ? There is no future in Eemshaven in Netherlands - why they have not moved into a cheap office in or nearby Emden ?

Just to show how much much much too much staff and crew they have had:
Holland-NL 400 for 1 ship
TT-Line has 607 for 9 ships operating in 4 countries (yes, including all office-staff ! The 607 is from annually report 2021/22 - maybe they have today around 700 because they have not sold 2 old ferries after arrival from the both newbuildings with crew of 66 each)

Therefore the complete shipping-branche, all experts from all sites - all are wondering wondering wondering about this extremly high personal-key for both - office-staff and crew - from HNL.