Windstar’s owner, Xanterra Parks & Resorts®, has reached an agreement with Seabourn to purchase their three small ships: Seabourn Pride, Seabourn Legend, and Seabourn Spirit. Under the project name Global Windstar, Windstar Cruises will become the market leader in small-ship cruising with 300 or fewer passengers, with a total of 1,230 berths.
“Windstar Cruises has experienced four straight years of growth. This expansion is the perfect way to build on the momentum following our recent fleet-wide renovation, providing us with the much needed capacity to match the accelerating demand for our intimate style of yacht cruising,” said Andy Todd, chief executive officer of Xanterra Parks & Resorts®. “Global Windstar enables us to extend our unique small-ship experience throughout the world.”
Windstar will take possession of the three 104 all-suite ships, which hold 208 passengers each, over the next two years in the Mediterranean. The Seabourn Pride will be the first ship to enter into our luxury fleet in April of 2014. Following a Windstar-branded renovation, where we will give the ship a new name and a casually elegant look, the Pride will set sail a month later in the Mediterranean in May 2014; voyages are expected to go on sale in May of this year. We will take possession of Seabourn Legend in April 2015 and Seabourn Spirit in May 2015. The yachts will start sailing in May of 2015 following their dry-dock period.
“Windstar is proud of its heritage in sailing and will continue to offer voyages on all three sailing yachts,” said Hans Birkholz, Windstar’s chief executive officer. “What our guests continue to be enthusiastic about is our intimate, yacht style of cruising. This style is the core of our brand experience and the new ships are a perfect fit to build on that foundation.”
Global Windstar will also allow us to service new regions of the world such as Asia and South America, in addition to the fifty countries we already sail to. We will continue to focus on the unique destinations that larger ships cannot call on.
You may already have noticed the opportunities Global Windstar presents when we announced Windstar’s return to Tahiti in May of 2014. Tahiti has long been the number one destination request from our guests. We are beyond thrilled to be returning. Wind Spirit, our recently renovated 148-passenger sailing yacht, will begin 7-day voyages from Papeete, Tahiti on May 2, 2014. Sailing the South Pacific Islands through November 7, the yacht will also call on Moorea, Taha’a, Raiatea, Huahine, and Bora Bora.
We hope you are as excited about this news as we are. Windstar offers you an intimate, unique, and engaging cruise vacation – and we can’t wait to see you on board again, whether it’s relaxing under the sails or cruising on one of our new all-suite yachts.
This is A-MAZING!
Great news and this will allow you to service our friends who are skittish about sailing, but want to experience your service levels, which we always talk about.
I hope you keep the original names, without the Seabourne, so passengers who have enjoyed these ships will know which one they were on before!
I like that idea – but Windstar coincidentally already has a ship named Wind Spirit, and as they just brought on the Seabourn Spirit, I think that might get a bit confusing if they keep the same name 🙂
So how about ‘Wind Spirit’ ?
The 3 little “sisters” are great ship ship or yachts. I hope that Windstar will keep the “all-inclusive system” and the service level of these 3 newcommers.
wouw , , Global Winstar , it’s still uniquely different between sailing ships and small ships .
Having sailed in Asia on the Pride with Seabourn, I love forward to sailing on her again in the Med…..
Awesome! Love those small ships. A great additional for the Windstar fleet.
We tried to book the Sea Breeze Inaugural Voyage only to find it’s sold out. Is there a waiting list for this trip?
Hi Sandy,
Yes, at this time there is a wait list for Star Breeze. Have you checked out Star Legend?
How do we get on the waiting list? Looked into the Star Legend and the dates don’t work for us.
Hi Sandy,
You can call our Vacation Planning Department at 1-800-258-7245. They should be able to help you out!
We took four (really two back-to-back) cruises on Star Pride last year, beginning with the inaugural voyage. I think Windstar gained some very valuable experience because it appeared to me Seabourn had deferred some maintenance Windstar had to cope with. I have to say we love the new “Star” class ships with their spacious suites, and the same high standards of personable Windstar service. It was wonderful seeing some of the same staff we’ve had on previous cruises! We even had the same cabin steward both voyages; she remembered Barbara liked the towel animals, so we had our little towel… Read more »