Meeting Mr Kurt Arild Larsen, Founder and manager of ARCTIC CRUISE IN NORWAY AS
BAD PYRMONT / DECEMBER 2020
Partnership
Arctic Cruise In Norway
Alva-Yachts
What is your Company's mission and your positioning on the market?
Arctic Cruise in Norway AS (ACIN) has been into the market since 2015 to offer high quality holidays and travelling experiences in Tromsø, Northern Norway.
Our slogan is ‘more than your dreams’
Our boats are the newest in the city of Tromsø.
Where does the partnership with Alva Yachts start from?
My basic education is partly into energy area, and I have been since beginning very focused on saving energy and environment, even before we were talking about electric cars and boats. Later on, when ECO came in, we were searching for other solutions than diesel. Our first action was changing our BMW X6 to Tesla Model X, offering Eco friendly fjord sightseeing - Northern Lights and Midnight sun tours to private and small groups of guests.
Then we started to search for Electric engines on boats. We located several producers and decided to visit the Cannes Yachting Festival. Here I met Mathias May among others and we started a dialog. We kept the dialog and I finally asked Mathias for help in our process and Alva Yachts was presented to us. I did a specific quality check and Mathias confirmed that Alva had all the technology I requested, not only the electric engine, but also an exchange system for heating / cooling system. Their system did exactly what I was looking for: exchanging seawater into heating. Then it was «love» at first sight.
Even if we live in Norway the price of electricity on the harbor where we are docked are extremely high. I have been working several years with Tromsø Havn (harbour management) to set focus on this, and two months ago they started a new company Arctic Energy Ports AS. Their mission is to become the best green harbor.
Heating is a very important issue when sailing in the Arctic. Heating is one part of the ECO perspective from my point of view.
Why the new Ocean Eco Explorer? Will it/they need any modification?
As I said earlier, partly because of my basic education and my interests in saving energy and that I met Mathias. Their concept fits perfect into our strategy- being in an exclusive market segment - even higher
where we are now. We believe Tromsø and the Arctic area is getting more and more on people’s map. Northern Norway is a market to explore, our nature is magic, and we have some very unique phenomena such as Northernlights (aurora borealis) and Midnight Sun - you can only experience here in the northern areas.
Alva Yachts’ concept seems to fit perfectly: Explore 60 is the right size, ECO is a high focus area from the political level in Norway into the action level.
Even their ECO 90 can be an alternative as well. Same for their new ECO Cruiser 50.
Where are your preferred itineraries, and why?
We have developed some nice experiences as an example to our potential market or potential co-partners / Investors. Have in mind we run our business 365days a year. For an investor point of view, this is very important compared to the Mediterranean area.
See winter example:
https://www.acinorway.com/skiandsaileco60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-h9nH6Q5wU&t=65s
See summer example:
https://www.acinorway.com/tromsotolofoten
This is a weekly private charter tour, where you can explore and experience most of what we can offer in the northern Norway: magic nature, pure and clean; Islands and fantastic fjords, and mountains diving into the sea; midninghtsun and northernlights; fresh fish as much as you like; whales like Orca and Humpback (Nov- Dec-Jan). We have also shorter tours as well.
Who are your target customers, in terms of lifestyle/wealth/location?
Guests who are at a higher financial level, and probably adults from 40 years and up, due to their financial independence. However, we see more young people interested in this kind of experiences
On our Ski & Sail trips we see several so-called ‘adult adventurers’, but also here young sporty people. The ECO focus will probably also be noticed in the younger customer group.
Today we have guests from almost all over the world, and we will probably experience the same with our new concept. We will probably have to sharpen our marketing to selected segments and geographical catchments, but our main focus is to work with partners around the world, and especially within the highend segment.
We carried out a survey among our partners and potential partners, asking them about what they believe about our new idea. And we get very quickly feedback form several partners that they really liked the concept and asked when could start selling.
But I expected more feedback, and maybe Covid-19 has set most of us into a wait position, trying to survive. In general, we will of course have both a ECO 90 and 60, even 50 into our fleet. But to be realistic, we will focus on Eco 60 as our own Yacht.
Kurt Arild Larsen
Daglig leder / Manager
ARCTIC CRUISE IN NORWAY AS
e-post: kal@acinorway.com| web: www.acinorway.com | mobil: +4790549997 | Skype: kurtarild LinkedIN: no.linkedin.com/in/kurtarildlarsen/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acinorway
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