APT owner Geoff McGeary
hosted the company’s 85th
anniversary cruise on Caledonia
Sky, which he says sets the tone
for the next trend in cruising.
A SMALL-SHIP cruise from the Philippines to
Papua New Guinea via Borneo and Indonesia
was enough to confirm to Geoff McGeary that
the “new concept” in cruises is not the ship or
the destination, but people’s experiences.
“I think it will become the new ‘in’ thing – to
have experiences, rather than just destination
seeking,” he told Cruise Weekly from aboard
the 114-passenger Caledonia Sky that APT
acquired last year.
“We’ve been welcomed everywhere we go,
and in some places, we are the first ship that
has ever visited them.
“It’s these kinds of moments that will draw
more people to small ships,” McGeary said.
“We’ve seen orangutans in their natural
habitat, and Komodo dragons on Komodo
Island, we’ve taken zodiacs along the world’s
longest underground river, and we’ve been to
an island where we learnt about their unusual
burial rites,” he recalled of the September
cruise celebrating the company started by his
father 85 years ago in Melbourne.
McGeary, who has run APT since 1956 when
he was only 19 years old, has seen its direction
steer from coaches to cruise ships.
“It feels a bit unbelievable that we now
specialise in cruising,” he said.
Caledonia Sky is dedicated to Asia-Pacific
for 2014-15, while in Europe, bookings have
opened for Gallipoli trips in 2015, which are
combined with APT’s most popular 15-day
Magnificent Europe river cruise.
“We have two ships doing that itinerary and
we’re negotiating for a third,” McGeary said.
