Swan Hellenic
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| Fate | Brand discontinued by Carnival in 2007, then founded again in 2007. Ceased trading in 2017 due to All Leisure Holidays being placed into administration |
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| Founded | 1950 (As Swans Tour Agency) 2007 (Re-established as Swan Hellenic) |
| Defunct | 2007, 2017 |
| Headquarters | Market Harborough, United Kingdom |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
| Products | Cruises |
| Parent | All Leisure Holidays Group |
| Website | www.swanhellenic.com |
Swan Hellenic was a British cruise line specialising in tours of historical or cultural interest aimed at the upper end of the cruise market. The BBC reported that the parent company of Swan Hellenic and Voyages of Discovery had gone into Administration on 4 January 2017 leaving 400 passengers abroad.The Civil Aviation Authority will help to repatriate them. Future bookings for 13,000 others have been cancelled but they will receive refunds.
It began in the 1950s when the Swan's Tours travel agency, operated by a father and son (W.F. Swan and R.K. Swan), was asked to organise a tour for visitors interested in the antiquities of Greece. The archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, was employed as guest lecturer.
From this developed a full programme of cruises, in which well known academics, writers and clergymen were regularly featured as guest lecturers, both on board ship and on site. The company prided itself on never repeating, exactly, any itinerary, but it concentrated, as the name suggests, on classical sites in the Aegean sea, around the coasts and islands of modern Greece and Turkey. It also, however, visited classical and other ancient sites in north Africa (including Egypt) and the eastern Mediterranean.
Unlike most commercial cruises, in which the onboard entertainment is as important as the destinations visited, Swan Hellenic cruises landed almost every day in order to visit historic sites, and travel between sites was undertaken by the ship overnight. The operation was characterised by an English ethos of high culture, although it had an international following.
Swan Hellenic was acquired from the Swan family by P&O in 1983. More recently, it became a subsidiary of the world's largest cruise operator, the British-American Carnival Corporation & plc. Under Carnival, the characteristically small 300-passenger ship Minerva was replaced in 2003 by the 600-passenger Minerva II. This led to criticism that the intimacy of the original cruise concept had been compromised.
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Wikipedia