AMSTERDAM — The ASTA River Cruise Expo has returned to Europe for its third year. This time features more ships, more travel advisors, and even bigger venues.
After two years of holding the conference in Budapest, the 2024 ASTA River Cruise Expo was held in Amsterdam, with nine river cruise companies displaying more than a dozen ships at the Amsterdam Passenger Terminal. The Amsterdam Passenger Terminal is the same terminal where ocean cruise ships docked prior to the Amsterdam International Congress. The city banned them from anchoring there in 2023.
A larger terminal and larger event space on the second floor also allowed ASTA to increase attendance. He was joined by nearly 1,300 travel advisors at the three-day conference.
The modern venue also features technology features for conferences, including a large monitor that projects a live stream captured by multiple cameras in the event space, allowing advisors sitting at the back of the room to You can now see the speakers on stage. clearly.
AmaWaterways, Viking, Emerald Cruises, Avalon Waterways, Riverside Luxury Cruises, Amadeus River Cruises and Uniworld all returned to the conference this year, while Tauck and Riviera River Cruises were participating for the first time.
Vessels on display at the expo include Amadeus Cara, AmaWaterways AmaMora and AmaSerena, Avalon Passion and Avalon Imagery II, Riverside Debussy, Riviera's MS Geoffrey Chaucer, Emerald Dawn, Tauk's MS Joy, and the new Uniworld These included the SS Victoria and the Viking Sigrun, which were chartered to . And Viking Ve.
ASTA is adding several new features to the expo this year, including adding a second trade show and controlling access to general sessions, trade shows, lunch, and dinner by scanning a QR code printed on badges required for the conference. Made some changes.
Mark Meader, ASTA's senior vice president of industrial affairs and education, said the new policy was put in place to make it “fair and equal for all attendees,” especially for lunch and dinner. Last year, some ships experienced service issues as more people attended unassigned onboard dinners, and staff were sometimes overwhelmed by the unexpected number of guests.
The sightseeing trip, usually held on the last day of the conference on Saturday, also saw some changes this year. For the past two Expos, ASTA was responsible for organizing sightseeing tours of Budapest. River cruise companies were in charge of the tours this year, with some offering tours they normally offer in Amsterdam, and others organizing special tours not on the regular itinerary. For example, Tauck organized a tour of the Heineken brewery for advisors staying onboard the Joy.
