Founded in 2007, Azamara Club Cruises is a fairly new cruise line, and it is also rather small, with the Azamara fleet consisting of only two modestly-sized ships that can hold about 700 passengers each. As a consequence, Azamara is not particularly well-known, at least relative to the giants of the cruise industry, like Carnival and Royal Caribbean. (The parent company of the latter – Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. – owns Azamara, for the record.) Despite its lower profile, however, plenty has been written about the cruise line, and there are a number of Azamara cruise reviews, which is what we are currently focused on. Prospective passengers are always keen to read cruise reviews, so we figured it would be helpful to compile some information about Azamara cruise reviews for those interested in traveling with the small, upscale cruise line.
That Azamara is a small, upscale cruise line is probably relevant to the reviews written about it. You pay a premium to take a cruise with them, but you also get excellent service. The restaurants are high-end, and room service is available 24 hours a day. Complimentary wine is served with lunch and dinner, and coffee, tea, and soft drinks are always free. Concierges will arrange all your onshore activities for you, and free shuttles will take you to and from the port (where possible). In short, taking an Azamara cruise is not like taking a regular cruise; you are more pampered while on board. Passengers will likely enjoy themselves, and as long as they aren’t bothered by the fact that Azamara cruises are comparatively expensive, they’ll rate the cruise highly. As a comparison, people who drive expensive cars generally like their cars, despite the fact that they are expensive. This is just to say that Azamara cruises are, in fact, well-regarded, but this shouldn’t necessarily come as a huge surprise. Of course, high-end services that cost a lot can also leave customers feeling cheated if they don’t get truly exceptional service, but it seems like, at least in general, people don’t complain much about luxury brands, and in any case Azamara is, again, well-reviewed.
Where exactly can you see these reviews yourself? Given that this is the 21st century, we’ll focus on online sources that you can easily access, although you can of course find information in more traditional media. (Travel magazines seem to talk a lot about cruises, for instance.) One of the major destinations for cruise reviews is CruiseCritic.com, which always seems to have lots of reviews about any given cruise line (or, for that matter, any cruise ship of a cruise line). Much the same can be said about CruiseReviews.com. They set up their ranking systems slightly differently, and the site you end up using will likely come down to personal preference. Both sites have plenty about Azamara, and people doing a decent amount of research into the cruise line will likely come across at least one of them. Both of these sites (and a few others) largely rely on user-submitted reviews, but not all review sites operate this way. Fodor’s and Frommer’s, two huge names in travel guide writing, both operate websites with tons of good information, and each site has a long review of Azamara. Both reviews can be profitably read.
Reviewing these cruise review sources will definitely give you a good sense of Azamara Club Cruises and the favorable reputation it has earned. Sites like Cruise Critic will give you tons of data to sift through, whereas more traditional sources like Fodor’s supply long feature articles to read. Both are helpful and should be consulted, for Azamara cruises or any others.