Luxury travel advisors Robyn and Murray Sinfield of Home Travel Company recently spent nine nights on Oceania Riviera during a Mediterranean cruise. Read their impressions in this exclusive review for Karryon Luxury.
Oceania Riviera is the perfect upper premium offering with capacity for 1,238 guests. She fits in the category of Azamara (700 guests) and Viking (900 guests). These are small ships by today’s standards and they are very popular post pandemic.
Oceania Riviera was built in 2012 but in 2022 underwent a refurbishment, making her lighter and brighter. Its smart design emphasises contemporary cool with premium flourishes like the Lalique embellished grand staircase and gleaming Italian marble.
There are seven Oceania ships in the fleet: Marina, Riviera, Regatta, Insignia, Nautica, Sirena, Vista – and the soon-to-be launched Allura in July 2025. Over the years we’ve sold Oceania Cruises a lot. Australians love the relaxed pace, smaller ship, interesting itineraries and the dress code of elegant casual (which most adhered to).
This cruise saw an older group on board: we would say average age 65 years with large groups of friends travelling as couples. Oceania does have a singles meeting area each night for fellowship and company. It’s an international guest list but primarily Americans.
Our voyage and accommodation
Trieste to Rome is our nine-night itinerary, moving from Venice as the port limits numbers to the delightful seaside Italian city of Trieste with a population of just 90,000 inhabitants. We have a good start with a great hotel stay before joining the ship.
We stayed at 5-star Grand Hotel Duchi D’aosta (a Relais & Chateaux property) on the square. We experienced genuine hospitality to get us ready for Oceania and the warmth of the crew.
Embarkation was awkward, messy and long – not the fault of Oceania Cruises but the terminal is old; there is nowhere for those with a disability or slowness/fatigue to sit down, and the process to go through is long and tedious in a hot hall with no air conditioning.
Once we’re through all of that, embarkation onto the ship was good and the safety drill was simply to go to the Muster Station to check in and acquaint yourself with where you need to be when the alarm is raised on the ship.
Oceania Riviera‘s General Manager, Emma Victoria Smith is a consummate host with nearly 30 years’ experience at sea. She leads a team excelling in customer service, each team member genuinely trying their utmost to enhance your time onboard.
We opted to purchase a concierge balcony at a cost per diem of AUD$768 per person for a concierge A2-verandah. Our cabin had a private balcony. Being refurbished in 2022, the soft furnishings have been well kept and are smart and modern with subtle tones of blue, charcoal and grey. The room combines the sleeping and sitting area, unlike many ships there is no partition between the two – so if clients need that it would be a matter of upgrading.
The sitting area has a two seater petit sofa and a round coffee table enough for two to eat or work from. There is a marble-topped writing desk which is large enough for a laptop and accessories. It has USB-A and C fast-charging outlets to ensure your devices never lose power. Also, there is a single European and two US power points. In addition, the writing desk has deep drawers which are handy for storing mobile devices as well as bulky clothing.
On the bedside there is also USB A+C charging points and good reading lights. Our wall mounted TV has everything from a movie on demand on the sea day, through to your shipboard account summary. There is a small bar area with a refrigerator and two gifted Vero water bottles (not insulated) which can be filled at various water stations around the ship.
We love our balcony at sail away and after dinner to sit and read and there are two comfortable chairs with a small cocktail table. Storage in the cabin is very limited, a very small wardrobe with a few drawers (a negative we find on most of the Oceania ships we’ve sailed on…. indeed there are more drawers in the bathroom that are handy to use to try to make up for the limited space in the bedroom).
Arguably since the refurb the bathroom has had the greatest amount of work done. It now has a generous walk in shower with a stone vanity and good size mirror with excellent lighting. The amenities are our favourite, Bulgari, and these are replenished as needed.
Overall our cabin 10116 was a great place to call home for nine nights in the aft of the ship, next to the Owners Suite, in a quiet location.
Dining on board
The liner hits the spot for food and wine devotees. Indeed there are groups of Americans on board just for that, with wine pairing events and vintner driven shore excursions. It’s certainly something Oceania hangs its hat on and have done over the 21 years Oceania has been at sea. Culinary would be their primary pillar behind their brand and they use, the tagline ‘the finest cuisine at sea’.
In our opinion, the Grand Dining Room and Terrace Grill are a little tired of choice – so it’s good to know that in the coming months, from what we’ve read, they will have a facelift. They don’t have a lot of choice as much of it in the Terrace Grill are repeated sides and at best their Bain Marie food is lukewarm – however we look forward to next time when the Sushi Station is added and night time dining on the pool deck alfresco style. They will call this ‘relaxed yet refined’ and that will invigorate the dining experiences being led by Chefs Alexis Quaretti and Eric Barale who have succeeded Jacques Peppin.
General food areas are the popular coffee corner, Horizons on deck 15, and Baristas on deck 14 which is next to the library and the IT desk.
Terrace Café on deck 12 is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Waves Grill is popular for burgers or hot dogs on deck 12 and there’s a Pizzeria for dinner on deck 12. There’s an abundance of bars: Waves, Grand, Martinis and Baritas with open hours spanning all the hours of the day.
The Grand Dining Room is elegant on deck six aft, and is open for breakfast and dinner and some lunches – but dining comes into its own in the included specialty restaurants at Jacques, Red Ginger and Polo Grill.
The Italian restaurant Toscana’s features hand made pastas and the rolling olive oil cart with matching balsamics.
Reservations are needed and you should remind guests to book online when it opens (dates on invoice or online) as seating starts at 6.30pm through to 8.30pm and it’s often difficult to get in when onboard. Everyone in standard cabins are allowed a visit per restaurant but you can visit the Maitre D Hotel on the night to see if space has cleared for a second visit or more.
We loved Red Ginger and were able to dine there three nights. We had hoped (third time lucky) to be able to dine in RESERVE for the Dom Perignon Champagne dinner but they didn’t get enough to operate (this is the only fee based restaurant).
Activities
The boutiques on deck five were also well stocked and there is a casino on deck six, which wasn’t that well supported on our cruise.
A place you never want to go (without travel insurance ) is the Medical Centre on deck four so keep
fit with the Aquamar Spa and Vitality Centre on deck 14 adjacent to the Fitness centre. The Spa has the usual array of treatments, facials, detox wraps, massages, med-spa, sauna /steam, heated ceramic loungers, thalassotherapy pool and whirlpools.
Oceania Riviera offers activities galore – even pickleball or you may prefer a hands-on cooking class with recipes from Red Ginger in the Culinary Centre. There were guests playing table tennis, paddle tennis, putting, croquet, bocce and shuffleboard.
The pool and hot tubs stayed popular. Pre-dinner, the bars were full especially Martinis lounge. After dinner, Riviera Lounge offered a musical show starring shipboard singers and dancers but overall, entertainment is fairly low key. All of the happenings around the ship are listed in the daily program, Currents. There is no app.
Launched on 1 October, the value proposition changed (again) from ‘Simply More’ to ‘Your World
Includes’. For Australians this is a backward move as the inclusions we loved like lunch/dinner beverages, or money towards shore excursions have been removed and you pay for all of this.
What is included is all dining excluding RESERVE, unlimited (1 device) Starlink Wi-Fi, soft drinks, tea/coffee, juices, smoothies and ice creams, group fitness classes, launderettes and shipboard gratuities.
Where we felt the biggest change was always having to hand over our stateroom card (like on a
contemporary cruise line). You have the choice for drinks to pay as you go or buy a package of USD439.95 per person, per day which includes house wines etc; or a Prestige Select package of USD$69.95 per person, per day that includes spirits and cocktails.
Free shuttles are provided to the centre of the ports visited where possible and there are pages of shore excursions to choose from in each port. In this complete list there are the standard large coach offerings which are priced in USD and there is no longer a shore excursion credit, eg four hours around USD$200 per person and 2.5hrs around USD$99 per person. For full day touring, budget around USD$250 per person and they have small group and individual FIT touring options, together with private car/driver.
The good news for us as Travel Advisors is that our first timers on Oceania don’t always know or are ready to rebook even though they’ve had an amazing time – so Oceania has launched their First Time Welcome Home Program which is worthy of advising your clients about as they can book within 90 days of disembarkation and still gain the savings like 10 per cent and other offerings, strengthening loyalty to the client and to us as their travel advisors. This is very proactive.
For more information visit oceaniacruises.com
The writer travelled at her own expense.
