Holland America Line | A History of Distinction, Innovation and Growth

In light of the Seatrade Convention in Miami this week - we thought our readers would take interest in reading the recent print articles from the MarEx January/February 2010 edition featuring Holland America Line and its President & CEO Stein Kruse. By Tony Munoz Engraved on a tablet within the pedestal on the Statue of Liberty are the famous words of Emma Lazarus’s poem: “‘Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she with silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’” Between 1880 and 1920 more than 20 million immigrants entered the United States, making up nearly 15 percent of the country’s total population. By 1900, New York City had more Italians than any city in Italy except Rome, more Poles than any city in Poland except Warsaw, as many Irish as Dublin and more Jews than any other city in the world. As European immigrants flooded into America, Holland America Line with its yellow and white funnels ringed with green stripes would transport more than 850,000 of them to the New World. Founded in 1873 as the Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart- Maatschappij N.V. (“NASM”), it quickly became known as Holland America Line (HAL) due to its services between Rotterdam and the Americas. Passenger transportation and cargo were its primary sources of revenue, though during the summer of 1895 the steamer Rotterdam II initiated a short round-trip vacation cruise from Rotterdam to Copenhagen through the Kieler Canal, a foretaste of the modern Holland America Line. In 1910, HAL offered its second cruise, this one from New York to the Holy Land, and other services began from Baltimore and South America. From the inception of the steamship line and throughout its storied history, extending to today’s highly competitive cruise market, HAL has well earned the reputation of being the “spotless fleet” due to the impeccable maintenance and housekeeping on all its ships. HAL’s ambiance has always been Old World grace and luxury combined with superior service, first-class interior appointments and world-class artwork throughout the public areas and staterooms of each ship. What’s in a Name? The vessels of Holland America also reflect the firm’s history through their names. In the beginning, HAL’s ships carried both passengers and cargo. The suffix indicated the ship’s primary function - “dam” for passenger service, “dijk” for cargo. The majority of the earliest ships were primarily passenger vessels and carried the “dam” suffix. When business began to shift toward a greater focus on cargo - beginning with the company’s 23rd ship - the suffix “dijk” became common. The first vessel with the “Zuider” name, for example, was launched in 1912 and christened Zuiderdijk to indicate its primary service of transporting cargo. From the earliest days, the ships often were named after various towns and villages in Holland. In the same spirit, the four ships in the Vista-class series are named after the points on the compass (Noordam, Oosterdam, Westerdam and Zuiderdam). And the latest Holland America ship ms Nieuw Amsterdam will be the fourth ship in the company’s history to bear this name. Surviving Hard Times The first great wave of immigration ended with the advent of World War I, during which HAL would lose six ships and 13 employees. Its newest ship, Statendam II, sitting in a Belfast building dock, was taken by the British government as a troop carrier and renamed Justicia. It was torpedoed and sunk in 1918. In 1921 the company started rebuilding its fleet and commissioned four passenger-cargo ships, Edam IV, Leerdam II, Maasdam III and Spaarndam II, which were deployed in the Cuban service. After the war came the second great wave of immigrants, who soon became scapegoats for the hard times in America. Responding to public outcries, the U.S. government initiated a tight national origins program in 1921, limiting annual immigration to three percent of a country’s U.S. population as determined by the 1910 census, with a cap of 350,000. The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, or National Origins Act, further limited immigration to two percent of a country’s U.S. population and reduced the cap to 150,000 per year. The new U.S. restrictions profoundly impacted the passenger business during the 1920s. However, Prohibition tipped the balance in favor of foreign companies over their “dry” U.S. counterparts, and the trans-Atlantic and cruise businesses remained profitable. The Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression and brought hard times to all countries and industries in the decade that followed. HAL battened down the hatches and sold 12 ships for scrap, closed or consolidated its offices throughout the world and reduced its staff by 35 percent, with the remaining employees taking a 10 percent cut in wages. Despite all the hardship, the company never stopped looking into the future and in 1938 took possession of its new flagship, the elegant Nieuw Amsterdam II. When World War II began the following year HAL had 22 ships, and Nieuw Amsterdam II found a new role transporting nearly 400,000 troops a distance of more than half a million miles. By the end of the war, the company had only ten ships left in its fleet and had lost approximately 265 employees. “It’s Good to Be on a Well-Run Ship” It was slow going in the aftermath of the war, a time for rebuilding and refocusing. In 1951 HAL began offering tourist-class passages on its two new “Economy Twins,” Ryndam II and Maasdam III, which gave ticketed passengers run of the ship except for the first-class deck. Throughout the 1950s, the company’s new advertising slogan was “It’s Good to Be on a Well-Run Ship.” The company started its Grand World Voyage from Hoboken Pier in New Jersey, and in 1959 its new flagship, Rotterdam V, entered service. During the 1960s, as traditional freighters moved from breakbulk to containerization, HAL sold its World War II–era tonnage and with several others organized Atlantic Container Line. During this period, the company generated cruise-only revenues from Nieuw Amsterdam II, Rotterdam V and Statendam IV, and began employing hotel management procedures on those ships. The company also adopted the multiselection Lido style of dining. But times – and tastes – were changing, and the public became enamored with air travel, which delivered them to Europe and other destinations in hours instead of weeks. The glamour of the cruise industry faded as jetting around the globe became the desired mode of travel. By 1969 HAL had only 13 trans-Atlantic sailings, and the company renamed its passenger business Holland America Cruises. In 1971, the company replaced its original house flag of “NASM” on the green-and-white-striped Rotterdam city flag with an orange flag inset with three swaths of aqua, white and aqua. In the same year, the “Darling of the Dutch” – the 1938-built Nieuw Amsterdam II – closed out the company’s 98 years of trans-Atlantic services and was redeployed to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale for 10-day-plus cruises to the West Indies. The era of grand steamship lines sailing the Atlantic came to a less than spectacular end. North to Alaska During the 1970s the company began new services as it recreated its identity with a distinctly Old World flavor to differentiate itself from the competition. First, it reflagged its ships to Dutch registry, ensured its deck crews were Dutch and painted its passenger ship hulls their modern midnight blue. HAL sold its cargo transport division and the last of its cargo ships. Soon it began hiring skilled Indonesians to work in the deck and engineering departments and, eventually, Filipinos in the kitchens, bars and lounges. The acquisition of Westours, an Alaska tour operator, signaled an important new direction in Holland America’s evolution. The head of HAL at the time was Nico van der Vorm, who had watched the company’s fortunes steadily decline during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978 he moved the firm’s headquarters from Rotterdam to Stamford, Connecticut, to get closer to the company’s financial and customer base, and he introduced a new company flag – orange for the Dutch Royal color together with HAL’s blue half-moon logo in the center. Westours, based in Seattle, had become extremely profitable under the leadership of its then-president, A. Kirk Lanterman, as passengers filled its ships for cruises to the wilderness frontier of Alaska. Sensing an opportunity, van der Vorm asked Lanterman to relocate to Stamford to manage the company’s entire operations. Although Lanterman knew he could restore HAL’s profitability, he told van der Vorm that the company’s headquarters needed to move west. In the fall of 1983, HAL relocated to Seattle and Lanterman was named President of the combined cruise and tour company. Mr. van der Vorm remained chairman of the company as Noordam II, the sister ship to Nieuw Amsterdam III, joined Rotterdam V on the increasingly profitable Alaska summer cruise circuit, and the reintroduced World Cruise program became a big hit with customers. HAL’s expanded operations and increased success was attracting notice and, in January 1989, the world’s biggest cruise operator, Carnival Corporation & plc, announced that it had completed the acquisition of Holland America-Westours Inc. One of Carnival’s first moves was to appoint A. Kirk Lanterman as the company’s president and CEO. Newly reinvigorated and with access to Carnival’s supply of capital, HAL almost immediately added a fourth luxury liner to the Alaska summer trade and announced a newbuilding program to construct four more vessels with Italian builder Fincantieri. In 1993 the new Statendam V entered service and, for the first time since dropping it more than 20 years earlier, HAL reintroduced service to Europe. By 1996 the company was operating eight ships and had expanded to include Caribbean, Canadian and New England cruises. Lanterman was named chairman and CEO the next year and, by the end of the decade, HAL purchased a 2,400-acre private island in the Bahamas called Little San Salvador, now named Half Moon Cay. The company also announced plans to build two (later expanded to four) Vista-class ships to usher in the new millennium. Signature of Excellence® – A Commitment to Premium Cruising As the company entered the 21st century, the “spotless fleet” of 19th-century fame had emerged from two world wars and the financial rollercoaster of the 20th century with a fleet of modern ships reminiscent of the golden era of trans-Atlantic cruising. The company embarked on an aggressive vessel-building program and officially changed its name to Holland America Line, Inc. and, in 2003, announced its $225 million Signature of Excellence initiative to enhance its five-star ships. Today, sailing on a Holland America ship is like blending modern technologies and lifestyles with the elegant amenities of a bygone era when the rich and famous socialized on the first-class deck on a leisurely cross-Atlantic voyage. The Signature of Excellence enhancement program encompasses every aspect of the guest experience. Highlights include luxuriously appointed staterooms, five-star dining, award-winning service, extensive enrichment programs and activities and compelling worldwide itineraries. The initiative continues to expand, and to-date enhancements have topped $525 million. Delivery of the new Vista-class vessels began in 2003 with the 81,769-ton, 1,848-guest ms Zuiderdam, which was soon joined by her sister ship, ms Oosterdam, christened by Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, and then ms Westerdam. In 2003 Stein Kruse was named president and chief operating officer and in December 2004, president and chief executive officer. In January 2006, the fourth ship to be named ms Noordam – and the fourth Vista-class vessel – was delivered by Fincantieri shipyard. That same year in June, Noordam rescued 22 refugees in the waters between Turkey and Greece. That operation earned the crew recognition from the United Nations, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, and several international refugee organizations. Responsible Tourism Award and More As the popularity of cruising soared, so did environmental concerns. Ship emissions, in particular, began grabbing headlines around the world, and HAL was quick to respond. In 2006, Holland America Line was certified to ISO 14001, the international standard for environmental management systems. In 2008, HAL was awarded the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Award for Best Cruise or Ferry Operator in recognition of their outstanding efforts in one of the fastest growing sectors of the travel industry. HAL was also among the first to retrofit ships – Westerdam and Oosterdam – to use shore power at the Port of Seattle. In April 2007, Zaandam sailed from Vancouver featuring a new emissionsreduction technology, and the company – in cooperation with several U.S. and Canadian regulatory agencies – deployed a technology to demonstrate the feasibility of using seawater to scrub engine emissions on seagoing ships. Today, HAL is one of the greenest cruise lines on the high seas, and it’s a distinction that very much pleases its president and CEO, Stein Kruse (see interview). With its Dutch roots still a major part of its DNA, HAL opened a new Rotterdam office in 2007 near its historical headquarters on Wilhelmina Pier. The new facility manages the hiring of seagoing personnel, purchasing, and European sales and marketing. In 2008, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands christened the 2,104-guest, Signature-class ms Eurodam in front of the original headquarters. In 2010, Holland America Line will mark the 137th anniversary of its founding and has now carried more than 10 million guests on its ships. As HAL moves towards its second centennial, it will take possession of its second Signature-class ship, ms Nieuw Amsterdam, in late June 2010. It is the fourth ship to bear the historic name, and its interior design and art collection will reflect the glamour and history of New York City. In today’s harried world, Holland America’s gracious white-gloved stewards will still escort you to your stateroom. Welkom aan boord!