AmaWaterways – Sailing the World but with Strong Roots in Ireland – ITTN’s Shane Cullen interviews Gary Murphy, VP Sales & Co-Owner

AmaWaterways is a Calabasas, California-based luxury river cruise company that offers cruises in Europe, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and Egypt. Co-owner and Vice President of Sales, Gary Murphy, made time in his busy schedule to link in with ITTN’s Shane Cullen while here visiting family in Ireland. He shares tales of Ireland, immigration, a hand-made raft down the Amazon and tips for Irish guests onboard AmaWaterways.

The AmaWaterways company is based on bonds. There are five core values, passion, positivity, personal interaction, partnership and pioneer spirit. This is less marketing buzzwords but an ethos they have embodied from the start.

ITTN’s Shane Cullen Interviews Gary Murphy, VP of Sales & Co-Owner

“We are excited about the Irish Market.  I’ve been coming here for years. My father started Brendan Tours in 1969… he named it after St. Brendan The Navigator.”.

In fact, St. Brendan is the patron saint of seafarers and travellers. After sailing around Ireland, Wales and western Scotland, he journeyed to the New World (America) in the sixth century.

Gary’s father, another pioneer in travel, followed the journey to America. Like many Irish, he immigrated to the States, working and saving to send money home for Gary’s mother to follow him across the pond six months later. He started off as a runner before getting a job at Aer Lingus. Gary explains, his father “rose through the ranks to pretty high levels and then decided to start a tour operator and it took off and did very well”.

“In 1999, we had a relationship with a guy named Serba Ilich who started Uniworld. We were selling [Uniworld]. We had a company called Love Holidays and we were selling Medjugorje. Serba hired Rudi Schreiner.”

Gary explains that Rudi, now president of AmaWaterways, caught onto river cruising.

After packaging and selling river cruises the founders came together and started Amadeus Waterways, namely, Rudi Schreiner, Kristin Karst and Gary’s father, Jimmy Murphy. The name of the business would change but not the people. Gary shared, “The GDS Amadeus wrote us a pretty strict letter so we just decided to shorten the name to AmaWaterways, which makes it a much, much better URL.”

And the rest is history.

No Stranger to It…

You’re no strangers to it. You have over 30 ships.

“32 and we have like six under construction. We’ve already outsold all of last year’s sales. Our 2025 travelled revenue is already greater than all of last year’s sales.”

“And that’s going to happen here. Ireland is going to catch on. They’re going to discover it and it will really do well. And if I were a travel advisor who wanted to earn a good income, I’d learn about river cruising. And every time I had an ocean client coming to me and say I would like to go on a cruise of Europe and give them a river cruising brochure”.

“It’s the Highways of Old”

It’s more Boutique. Every major city is built on a river. You’re right in the heart… you can explore the city and you’ve got this lovely luxurious boutique floating hotel.

“I’m lucky to have a good relationship relationship with Vicki Freed from Royal (Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean International’s Senior Vice President of Sales, Trade Support and Service). And I was on a panel with her once and she said, Gary, my tenders carry more passengers than you do. And that’s a good thing for those looking for that style of vacation.”

AmaWaterways is not the big ship experience, it’s intimate and can take you to places the big ships can’t.

High-End, Five-Star Experience

When it comes to AmaWaterways itself, you’re very much a high-end five-star experience. You include all your meals and then a lot of the drinks too.

“It’s interesting because of the terminology. We’re not all-inclusive right yet but I like to say we’re “more inclusive”, right?”

Along with teas & coffees, sparkling water and soft drinks, “we include sparkling wine or champagne with breakfast, depending where we’re cruising, beer and wine with your lunch, your sparkling water and [soft drinks] and all that. Then an hour before dinner, we have an open bar. It’s really nice because everyone gets together. They start a conversation and that often leads to them sitting together at dinner. And [we have] beautiful wines at dinner.”

Evening entertainment follows but if you want a drink after dinner, it is not included. Gary explains why this is intentional and adds to the experience.

“We have a younger clientele. If you and I were on an AMA ship and we’re finishing dinner in Cologne and it’s May and it’s bright out till 10.30 at night, we’re gonna go to a beer hall in Cologne with 400 other Germans in there and have a beer. It’s a stone’s throw from the ship. If you include your drink, the people don’t get off the ship.”

I quite like that concept because you feel kind of beholden to the ship, right? I’d think I don’t want to leave the ship as I’ll get my lovely drink, and I’ll be comfortable onboard. It’s like an invisible elastic band. I’d end up regretting not having that adventure.

“It’s like a little bit of a push from us. It works well. What we do include is all our shore excursions. You’ll have an all-inclusive river cruise company saying they’re all-inclusive. But if you’re doing a truffle excursion or you’re doing a wine tasting in Rengauer, that’s something you pay for. With us, [the excursions] are all included.”

“When people go on a river cruise, we want to deliver experiences. And this is one way of ensuring it – experiences in a port. So you could do a wine tasting or you could do a bicycle ride or you could do a hike, or you could do three different levels of walking. That breaks them all up into smaller groups. And as a family or as friends, you might choose to do the culinary and I might choose to do the bike ride and we don’t have to think about how much is it going to cost. And so I don’t know if it’s the right philosophy, but it seems to work for us.”

What it means is you can truly switch off when you’re away. That part of your brain, you can shut it down.

Guests can enjoy cruises without a care as Gary explains they have this great app. The clients sign up, it posts everything to the database, things they like, their documents, the timings. With conviction, he states “Everything is in there”.

“What’s also good is because when your mind is shut off when you’re in town and you don’t remember where the ship is, there’s a map that’ll show you where the ship is on the map of the town and you can just show anybody and say how do I get here?”

“And if you look at it and that ship’s moving, you’ve got a long taxi ride.”

Many river cruise companies mainly focus on the rivers of Europe. You have some really interesting itineraries.

“You see, Rudi Schreiner (President of AmaWaterways) built a raft with some friends and cruised down the Amazon River.”

“I mean on a hand-made raft. It was a six-month trip. He’s a real adventurous soul. He’s Austrian.”

And clearly made of stronger stuff than I. I’m more soft adventure. I enjoy a pleasant stroll, a bike ride through Amsterdam or a swim with gentle sea turtles. I thought I was brave trying to trapeze on Club Med with an abundance of safety harnesses. Clearly, their range of excursions caters for the truly adventurous and also the likes of me. I want to be hand-held by an expert who has experienced it all and is going to show me the way. It is probably why I love this type of holiday, one where I get to see lots of parts of the world but I’m going to safely return to the comforts of my room to get a good’s night sleep. Yes, clearly, I’m showing my age and my days of pitching a 2-man tent in a field are long gone (and were never my thing). Give me 5-star luxury any day. In fact, a decent mattress, a decent coffee & a stunning view. I digress.

The Magdalena River in Columbia this March

Gary dives into another adventure on the horizon.

“We’re going on the Magdalena River this March in Columbia. And the people in these towns we are visiting are so excited but they weren’t truly excited until a month ago because we brought the docks in. Now they see docks and they can see it’s really happening… we wanted to build the riverboats in Colombia so they had the acquired expertise to maintain them.”

“The last time there were riverboats on there was 1962 but they were hauling coffee and cocoa. The government’s really excited and if you look at the experiences that people are having by the ocean ships going to Cartagena, to Barranquilla… Colombia is just waiting to welcome and it’s gonna be exciting. The villages and the towns are so excited. That’s going to be great.”

Cartagena in Columbia is this vibrant, colourful city on the coastline of the Caribbean Sea. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site with its famed walled city, colonial architecture, festivals, music, a tropical landscape & climate and the flavour of Columbian cuisine.

AmaWaterways journeys between Cartegena and Barranquilla along the Magdalena River. Barranquilla is another major city in Columbia, known as the “Golden Gate” of the country. This city is home to carnivals, musicians, artists and writers.

There are options to add on stays at either end too. Check out their cruises in Columbia here.

AmaWaterways Now Licensed to Package Flights in Ireland

“We can now, out of Ireland, do packaged airfares. We have a team over in the UK and we can now do that and that will help. We also have a 24-hour, emergency desk worldwide that’s operating.”

My wife and I went to Egypt the year before we had kids. We loved it. We went for a sun holiday in Sharm-El-Sheikh, snorkelling in the Red Sea at Ras Mohamed Nature Reserve at is was outstanding. We ended up taking an internal flight to Cairo and after been driven at breakneck speed in a converted Volkswagon van. He got us safely to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities and the Giza Pyramids despite the traffic in Cairo (you’ll understand if you’ve been) and him having to contend with my wife’s thousand questions about every aspect of Egypt. I’ve been fortunate to be back in Egypt with a fam since and still the architecture, culture and history constantly mesmerise me. The technology and design is fascinating – seeing a stunning, folding deck chair from Ancient Egypt still sticks in my head. Ahead of this interview, AmaWaterways’ cruises down the Nile stood out as a bucket-list holiday and it would feature at the top.

The Nile, Egypt – Highest Scores of Anything We Operate

“The reports we are getting back from the Nile of anything we operate has the highest net promoter score.”

While there is capacity on the ships, impacted by the geopolitical uncertainty of the region, Gary explains it makes sense to operate both ships “as you need to keep your crew going, right.”

It’s not a question. It’s a statement. Much like the decision that he wanted the cruise ships in Columbia to be maintained there, I’m sure it makes commercial sense but there’s also the strong sense of the company wanting to be embedded within the communities. It’s not a sales pitch but the sense that these connections are important. Read the reasons why they picked Columbia and the co-founders of AmaWaterways speak of the sense of family. Equally, they come across as a family business. Co-founded by people who had a clear, common vision, shared ethos, adventurous spirit and a long-held relationship of working well together. Gary earned his stripes and followed his father into the business. This is a family-run business with deep roots and I like it.

Gary puts Andrea on the Spot

Andrea Stafford, Sales Director UK & Europe, is next to us. Gary puts Andrea on the spot as she has just returned from this cruise. Andrea explains with genuine enthusiasm, “It was the most incredible experience ever. It’s just incredible. It is such a stunning destination”

And in Egypt, it’s great to have your hand held.

“Yes, we do hold your hand. And as a company, we do a really good job of it. Our Egyptologist is second to none. We have a lot of time for that.”

Check out the Egyptian itineraries – here.

What’s Next for AmaWaterways

I have Indiana Jones in my head every time Gary mentions Rudi.

“Rudi loves exploring different areas. He’s got a couple of places, I don’t know how to pronounce any of them. We have a couple of different places on the horizon right now. As long as it’s safe and navigable.”

“We charted the Zambezi Queen and we did a 4-day Chobe River combined with a land product. I did that last year this time. That is a phenomenal experience. We don’t own that boat. It’s a charter but it’s almost like a houseboat, it’s like 28 folks on board.”

There is a choice of itineraries in Africa, taking in Johannesburg, Victoria Falls, Greater Kruger National Park and a safari cruise. It is the stuff of dreams, adventurous, luxurious dreams or, as I equate most things in my head to the silver screen – this is a big budget, elegant adventure that ends happily for everyone. Browse the offering at https://www.amawaterways.eu/river-cruises-chobe

Sign Up with AmaWaterways – Connect with Andrea & Katrina

Obviously, you’ve got Andrea Stafford (Sales Director UK & Europe) and then you’ve got Katrina Latimer (Business Development Manager) as well. Both are based in the UK compared with Gary’s Los Angeles home.

“All I can say is we do a good job. And this is our livelihood. We don’t do anything else. We’re not operating coach tours, or in the oceans. Our focus is river. And we know if we bring the client back happy, they’ll travel again, sure. We’ve been very successful without seeing us on TV. I know Andrea would like to see us [on TV] but we we reinvest in the product.”

Speaking of the culinary experience, Gary explains, “We don’t freeze anything. I’ve been challenged by my friendly competitors saying you can’t make that happen. We do, but there are two situations occurring out of this. It ties you to the local community because you’re using their butchers, their fishmongers, you’re getting the produce locally and the community appreciates that.”

“But more importantly, the chefs can deliver a stronger better culinary experience by having fresh ingredients. We recognise that if you have an exceptional culinary experience, they’ll like their cruise manager better. They like that cruise director better. They like their cabin better. It can be pouring rain every day. They like that better. It’s really important to have a great quality experience.”

It’s true. Gary is right. In fact, two pet peeves of mine are bad coffee and cheap orange juice at breakfast. I still remember certain hotels for those two things. Forget the pillow menu, a decent coffee will work wonders for my mood and my memories.

We were spending more on Bandwidth than on Fuel

Gary continues, “Also we have exceptional Wi-Fi, It sounds like a simple thing but it’s not. We have Starlink and 5G. We were spending more on bandwidth than on fuel. People like to stay connected.”

He’s right again. And I’ve three pet peeves. Add weak wifi to my list.

“Out of the North American market, people like to be working and I don’t know if their bosses know that they’re actually away. And I’m not joking.”

Have you always been IT-focused? I remember I visited an AmaWaterways ship back in around 2018. Every cabin had an Apple iMac in it.

“Yes, like I said, it’s an expensive habit… We work hard to get the business but Rudi says once we got the business, you want them coming back so you invest heavily in all these.”

The technology onboard, the wifi, the app that guests have, the experience, it is all a focus for the company, every detail.

“All of our ships have the Chef’s Table restaurant where there’s a kitchen… And it’s wonderful. And we have different wines with pairings and different tastes and that’s included in the price of the cruise. Everyone on a seven-night, cruise has ability to dine there once.”

AmaWaterways has earned its stripes in culinary prowess. The river cruise company is now part of the invitation-only membership to La Chaîne Des Rôtisseurs (“The Royal Guild of Goose Roasters), a prestigious gastronomic society that is internationally renowned and dates back to 1248.

Gary gives a golden nugget of a tip for Irish travel advisors

“When clients go on board they should ask which night is the La Chaîne Dinner. And don’t book that night for the Chef’s table because you don’t want to miss it. “

Gary also highlights, if anyone has food allergies, that while there’s a legend on the menu, he recommends discussing dietary requirements at a meeting they’ll arrange with the head chef. The chef will design the menu for you with you in mind. The emphasis is on service.

We’re Not White Glove, We’re More California

The style onboard is my style, relaxed luxury. Gary explains it well.

“We’re not white glove. We’re more ‘California Casual'”.

“You look at our brochure sometimes, you’ll see a picture where the guy with a tie. That’s the only time you’ll see a guy with a tie, he’s in our brochure. People wear a sports coat so bring a sports coat, that’ll also keep you warm at night. You don’t see sequin dresses or things that. It’s about enjoying the experience and being relaxed”.

Who’s Onboard

What kind of cruiser is onboard?

“Predominantly US, then Canadian, then Brits, then Aussies and hopefully more Irish people.”

“I was just with my cousins at dinner tonight and a few years back. We had 42 of my family from Ireland, on the ship. It was one of the highest-rated departures for the whole year. It started off with my cousin, David, going up to our pianist who’s playing and singing the songs and he goes. ‘Do you know this song?’ And he says ‘you don’t know crap’ and he takes the mic and then they all started singing their party piece. And then, the next day, all the clients are all ‘David, give us another song’ and it started all over again.”

“We always know if we have a few Irish on board it’s great. It livens things up.”

I’ve little doubt that it was a decent session. A wedding is decent if this singing ends as breakfast starts (or maybe that’s just my family and friends).

Before and After the Main Event

“What else can I say? A point of difference. We have great pre and post-packages. We have most of our cruises 7-night or 11-night. We have 2-week [cruises]. Let’s say your goal is starting in Lyon and you’ve booked the three nights in Paris as you’re pre-cruise. The cruise manager manages the desk at the hotel. So he’s like your personal concierge while you’re in Paris. He travels with you from Paris to the ship, arranges the luggage or anything else. When you’re on the TGV, the high-speed train and then you cruise with him. And let’s say you’re doing the post-cruise in Barcelona. He travels with you and is with you in Barcelona.”

That’s my kind of hand-holding on a holiday.

“Most people keep their cruise manager on those seven nights. He goes back and forth. Think of the logistics, we have to get our cruise director to Paris, travel, on the ship, get him to Barcelona, and then get him back to wherever the next place is. It’s much more cost-effective just to have a step-on guide which most of our competitors do but it’s those subtle differences that often we forget to point out that make a real difference to the guest.”

It is real service that’s intangible

Andrea adds that within the hour, the team will know your room, your drink, and your personal preferences, it is real service that’s intangible. And both say everyone says that, however, in a testament to AmaWaterways, it’s seen as a team effort. Gary explains that the people who have been with them, have been with them from the very beginning, are still with them and, collectively, they have developed a culture. Their expansion decisions are linked with ensuring the culture is shared and learnt rather than a new crew on a new ship. They want the ethos of the company embedded on each new member of their family. This strategy is for the guests but also for the crew and team.

What you get when you talk to Gary, and I got it from Andrea and from Katrina on other occasions – that this isn’t just business. It’s a passion, it’s a livelihood and it’s a shared ideology. And it’s exactly what people want. An authenticity.

Their business is founded on travel agencies. Around 90 per cent of bookings are from travel advisors.

Gary ends with “And we pay great commissions and we have a wonderful team in the UK, like Andrea and Katrina that make me look so damn good.”

The Irish sense of welcome and warmth is certainly in the genes. I’ve little doubt AmaWaterways will appeal to the Irish market. For the agent portal, click here.

For more on AmaWaterways from ITTN