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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Mike Jason, President, StarVista LIVE, one of the world’s largest producers of music-themed cruises. StarVista LIVE offers a diverse collection of eight theme cruises covering a cross-section of music genres all generally aimed at 55-plus cruisers. StarVista LIVE’s flagship cruise is the Malt Shop Memories Cruise which features the music of the 50s and 60s, and artists have included the likes of the Beach Boys, Frankie Valli and Dion. Other theme cruises are the Soul Train Cruise which has starred artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Smokey Robinson, and Kool and the Gang; The Country Music Cruise which has featured Vince Gill, Kenny Rogers and Alabama; ‘70s Rock & Romance Cruise with the likes of Peter Frampton, and America; Ultimate Disco Cruise which has featured Gloria Gaynor, and KC and The Sunshine Band; Flower Power Cruise featuring Three Dog Night, and Blood Sweat & Tear; Sandy Beaches Cruise headlined and curated by Delbert McClinton; and, their newest event, The Big Easy Cruise, featuring New Orleans jazz, funk, and R&B and just premiered in November.

Mike is one of the few passionate cruisers I wrote about in two books of The Joy of Cruising Trilogy. Mike and StarVista LIVE was in my first cruising book, The Joy of Cruising, in Malt Shop Memories in a section called “Theme Cruising: Two Passions in One.” In my new release, The Joy of Cruising Again, I decided to circle back to Mike to cover how StarVista LIVE fared with the pandemic. The pandemic’s effect on the cruise lines was major but the impact on operators of theme cruises is about as significant a crisis as they are likely to face. Every consequence of COVID-19 on the cruise lines is exacerbated for a company dependent on full-ship charters, particularly a music-oriented theme cruise company. Not only are they dependent on what the cruise lines do (who are dependent on the Center for Disease Control), but they had two sets of stakeholders they had to maintain ongoing relations with during the cruising shutdown—guests, who in theme cruising are very likely repeaters, and performers, also likely to have an ongoing relationship with StarVista LIVE. 

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