Celestyal Cruises’ John Diorio, vice president and managing director, North America, outlined a series of new initiatives for travel trade partners in a call on Monday as the line looks to bounce back from having its entire fleet temporarily trapped in the Middle East this past spring.
Both Celestyal Discovery and Celestyal Journey successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz back in April after being trapped in the region due to the ongoing conflict between Iran, Israel, and the United States. The line had previously launched an extensive programme of winter sailings through the Middle East.
“Right now, it’s all on hold,” said Diorio of the line’s previous winter deployments in the Middle East. “It’s something we’re in constant conversation about with our partners in the Arabian Gulf. You know, we think we’ve had a great season there. We’d love to go back.”
Instead, Celestyal is pivoting, putting its fleet on new winter itineraries in the Mediterranean, while also rolling out a new onboard retail partnership. The line also plans to create its first travel advisory board to promote the brand and its authentically Mediterranean product.
New Winter Itineraries
Celestyal cancelled its previously scheduled Gulf of Arabia season, choosing instead to keep its fleet in the Mediterranean for the winter 2026–27 and winter 2027–28 seasons.
The line is sending its Celestyal Journey on four new March 2027 voyages, including its “Heavenly Greece, Italy and Croatia” and “Idyllic Greece” itineraries.
Celestyal Discovery, meanwhile, will chart a new course for Celestyal in the Western Mediterranean for the winter 2026–2028 seasons. Exact itineraries and ports of call are yet to be revealed, but Diorio promised that those voyages would be announced within the month and available for booking.
Both ships will experience short periods of warm lay-up this winter due to the last-minute schedule change, something Diorio says won’t happen next year: “That’s the last time we’ll have those ships laid up. As the Med season starts in March of 2027 for us, then we will no longer have the ships laid up.”
Stars of Excellence Programme
To better recognise the travel trade, Diorio revealed that the line is launching what it calls “Stars of Excellence”. The programme will reward the 50 top-selling agents in North America, based on bookings, allowing them to sail with Celestyal gratis.
“We’re kind of calling this the Race to the Med,” said Diorio. “Those top 50 will be invited to sail with Celestyal sometime in March or April of 2027, to reward them for that amazing effort in sales that they provided us for the past year. We are going to have this amazing Stars Gala, an award ceremony for our top 50 Celestyal Stars of Excellence.”
Diorio says the contest will be based on the total number of bookings made by travel trade agents between 1 January and 31 December 2026.
“We just launched it, and we’re really excited about the feedback,” said Diorio. “It coincides with the training updates we did back at the beginning of the year. We relaunched our training programme – another way to get our advisors truly educated about us.”
— Aaron Saunders, Digital Editor, CruiseTimes
