River Advice now owns Koln-Dusseldorfer

I ran across the press releases at the links below recently about River Advice's acquisition of Koln-Dusseldorfer in late 2016. River Advice provides staff and operational support for 45 ships associated with 20 different cruise lines. They furnish crews for both hotel and ship operations. From their client list, it looks like Avalon is its largest client. From my limited knowledge, K-D does mostly day trips on the Rhine, but it also controls a lot of docking locations on the river--notamermaid can probably tell us more about K-D. This acquisition might give their clients priority access to some of those locations?

River Advice Purchase of K-D

https://www.riveradvice.com/press-re...orfer-deutsche

https://www.riveradvice.com/press-re...w-ideas-future

River Advice Fleet

https://www.riveradvice.com/fleet

I ran across the press releases at the links below recently about River Advice's acquisition of Koln-Dusseldorfer in late 2016. River Advice provides staff and operational support for 45 ships associated with 20 different cruise lines. They furnish crews for both hotel and ship operations. From their client list, it looks like Avalon is its largest client. From my limited knowledge, K-D does mostly day trips on the Rhine, but it also controls a lot of docking locations on the river--notamermaid can probably tell us more about K-D. This acquisition might give their clients priority access to some of those locations?

 

River Advice Purchase of K-D

https://www.riveradvice.com/press-re...orfer-deutsche

https://www.riveradvice.com/press-re...w-ideas-future

 

River Advice Fleet

https://www.riveradvice.com/fleet

Thank you, fuelscience, this made the local news and headlines, of course. KD has the largest day excursion fleet on the Rhine and is (was) the oldest running "Aktiengesellschaft", i.e. joint stock company in the world. Before it was sold to River Advice. I am not sure how the company has developed since then. I have not followed it up really. The day-to-day running has not changed I think.

This "priority thing" at docking locations came about when Viking took over the KD fleet of river cruise ships (those with cabins). The day excursion boats stayed with KD. Viking as far as I know has phased out the old KD boats, as well as some of the boats built by Viking in the traditional style of KD. If not all of them. They now run for various different, usually German and Dutch, companies.

I will have a closer look at what KD is doing when we get closer to the (main) season.

The loveliest boat of KD is certainly the MS Goethe. She is an original old paddle steamer, but "lost" her steam engine due to economic and practical reasons during the last refurbishment. She has since then been called a "paddle wheeler".

notamermaid

K-D is the oldest company on the Rhine river dating back to 1825 (KD itself was founded 1853 by merging two companies). They invented river cruising in 1960 with the first river cruise ship the MS Europa. In 1995 they stopped the river cruise business more or less. In 2000 the river cruise part was sold to Viking and the excursion boat part was sold to Premicon AG (an investment company from Munich).

After WWII they still had 14 paddlewheel steamboats (only one was still in operation). The Goethe is the only paddlewheeler which is still with the company. She was renovated and put back into service in 1996. In 2008 the frame which was the base of the steam engine broke. It was too expensive to replace this frame so they decided to dieseliaze the boat. The Goethe is still running.

In 2009 K-D started to restructure the company transferring their head quarter to Luxemburg and giving up the German flag for the Maltese flag. There was also a court trial with Viking. The contract of 2000 did not allow K-D to go back into the river cruise business. A year or two ago K-D finally did win. They started to found a company taking care of the nautical part of a river cruise ship (as you may know river cruising is pretty complicated, there´s one company owning the ship, another company is staffing the nautical department, a third one is staffing the hotel department and the fourth one is the river cruise company the ship is running for - so all people working onboard do not have a contract with the river cruise company except for the cruise director who is usually a free lancer hired by the river cruise company).

Premicon AG was known for building quite a fleet of river cruise ships. They did not operate but only own the ships. The ships were fully chartered to river cruise companies such as Viking, Avalon and many others. During the last few years Premicon AG started to sell out those ships. Selling K-D is another step. Premicon AG also owns the Sächsische Dampfschifffahrt in Dresden which still has the largest fleet of paddlewheel steamboats.

steamboats

Thank you steamboats,

for the detailed info. I just did not have time to elaborate more on the subject yesterday. The river cruise industry business is indeed complicated, especially the word "own" when it involves shares, part shares, etc. Premicon is still the owner of the Belvedere, the ship I went with. Before the name Belvedere it was the Avalon Poetry, the ship is managed by KD Cruise Services Ltd. and chartered by Transocean.

Not an untypical situation.

If the new situation of KD and River Advice will have much impact on the situation on the river, especially as regards docking, remains to be seen. I cannot imagine them making any major changes to their day excursion boat business. Restructuring and docking location changes due to economic reasons had already been made in previous years.

Although having had somewhat "taken its real heart away" according to steam enthusiasts, I still recommend a trip on the Goethe. She takes you back to another era of travel. :)

notamermaid

I had the pleasure to ride the Goethe when she still was a steamboat.

steamboats