A Letter from our President: 20 Years of Travel Adventures & Milestones

As the new President of Oceania Cruises, I wish you a happy and beautiful new year. We’re so proud to begin the year celebrating Oceania Cruises’ 20th anniversary. For those of you who may not know, Oceania Cruises has always been very near and dear to me. Not only was I a founding member of Oceania Cruises back in 2002, but I am also the son of the founder, Frank J. Del Rio. It seems cruise ships and a passion for global exploration have always been in my DNA. In fact, even prior to Oceania Cruises, I recall being at a naming ceremony for another ship decades ago with my father, and I remember him telling me, “Don’t worry, son, your day will come – you’ll have ships of your own one day.”

And now that dream has come true. I couldn’t be happier to be leading Oceania Cruises as we begin an exciting new era with the debut of Vista this year and our eighth ship on the way. When we started out with just three small ships in those early years, we treated each other like family and we treated our guests like family – and we never looked back. It is that feeling of family that keeps our guests coming back time and time again, and it’s the reason we have so many team members – both shipboard and shoreside – that have been with us for 10, 15 or 20 years. The core of what makes Oceania Cruises different is the people, and the passion and the dedication that come in many forms. Our Officers, Staff and Crew delight in seeing you return again because to us, Oceania Cruises is family.

Twenty years later, I couldn’t be happier to be leading the company as we now make the final preparations to christen Vista this spring and begin to prepare for the eighth beautiful ship in the fleet, coming in 2025. With our focus firmly on the future, we’re evolving the guest experience at every turn. Our entrepreneurial spirit and our passion for innovation are in our DNA. To us and to our talented culinary team, The Finest Cuisine at Sea® means that we continually evolve our dining experiences, we reimagine menus and we develop new recipes, dishes and concepts. We have several exciting new culinary experiences and mixology programs debuting on Vista in 2023, and we will continue to create new and different experiences, raise the bar and invite our chefs to follow their passions. In designing our new ships, we planned them to provide the most spacious staterooms afloat and feature dramatically more galley space per guest than any other. Our claim to The Finest Cuisine at Sea® has never been simply a slogan – it has been our cornerstone from the beginning and is a core pillar that we have been investing in and innovating for 20 years.

We bring that same passion and innovation to our destination experiences too. After 20 years, we now visit more than 600 destinations worldwide and we continue to add new ports every season that surprise and delight seasoned travelers with off-the-beaten-path locales and hidden secrets. Our Destination Services team, filled with curious travelers who have sailed the world over, is passionately devoted to creating one-of-a-kind destination experiences through small-batch tours and in-depth Land Programs that leave you with lifelong memories.

Throughout it all, we continue to focus on growing our Oceania Cruises family, one guest and one team member at a time. In many ways, it seems we are not so far from the first table we gathered around in 2002 with big dreams and aspirations for a new cruise line that would do things differently. It was always – and continues to be – about the people.

Likewise in the month ahead, I hope you enjoy the memories and archival photos we’ll be sharing from our team in celebration of our 20th anniversary, and I invite you to share your own Oceania Cruises stories and favorite moments on our social media pages.

With much to be grateful for these past two decades, I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the Oceania Cruises family that has made it what it is today. The best is still yet to come, and we cannot wait to share all the incredible new adventures on the horizon with you.

Warm regards,

Frank A. Del Rio
President