PBS Host Lynn Elmhirst Rethinks Europe’s River Cruise Seasons

Lynn Elmhirst saw the effects of this past extreme summer in Europe, firsthand.

She had followed news and industry reports about exceptionally low water across parts of the continent and took a detour to Cologne, Germany, after finishing a project nearby.

What she saw from a friend’s home overlooking the river was beyond what she feared.

“Those pleasure crafts were sitting on mud,” Elmhirst said, describing boats in a marina on the Rhine. Nearby, she could see a bridge crossing the river.

“Both of the bridge’s pylons were exposed,” she said. “The bases were completely exposed, sitting in dirt, not water.”

“And I thought, I have to document this.”

This was not how she had expected to see the Rhine on this trip.

Elmhirst, the executive producer and host of PBS’ World’s Greatest Cruises, had just completed the inaugural sailing of Transcend Connect, the first ship from Transcend Cruises. The sailing was supposed to include the Rhine.

But she did not arrive at the river by ship.

“We were supposed to be on the Rhine, and it was all changed,” she said. “We stayed entirely in the Netherlands.”

“But I wanted to see with my own eyes, what does the Rhine really look like?”

“And I was absolutely shocked.”

What Elmhirst saw in Cologne sharpened concerns she already had about European river cruising.

“We have to acknowledge this,” she said. “There is a trend. It’s a long-term trend. We’re not going back.”

“And so we have to really rethink how we do river cruising in the summer.”

‘I Didn’t Pay For a Bus Tour’

In August, the Rhine gauge at Kaub, one of the river’s most important shipping chokepoints, fell below 4 inches before rain brought some relief. The previous record low there had been about 10 inches in 2018. The depleted Rhine restricted freight loading and affected German industry as well as river navigation.

But the recent history of Europe’s major rivers is not simply a story of progressively lower water. In June 2024, heavy rain and flooding forced sections of the Rhine and Danube in Germany and Austria to close.

European river cruising faces risk at both ends of the water-level spectrum. Too little water can make navigation impossible. Too much can close stretches of river or prevent some ships from clearing bridges.

Elmhirst has been aboard cruises where changing river conditions led to substantial itinerary modifications. Some passengers accept the disruption as one of the uncertainties of travel.

“But there are increasing numbers of cruise passengers who say, ‘I didn’t pay for a bus tour,’” Elmhirst said.

Then comes another question.

“Didn’t the cruise line see this coming?”

Elmhirst considers that fair.

“Because they did,” she said.

River cruise companies have become remarkably skilled at responding when water interferes with an itinerary.

“What they do to manage when low water levels mean that they cannot sail and they cannot navigate the itinerary as originally planned,” she said, amounts to “operational feats of miracles.”

Operators can alter itineraries, extend stays in certain destinations or move passengers farther by motorcoach.

Cruise lines with enough ships can also perform what Elmhirst calls “river cruise hopscotch,” moving passengers and their luggage by bus from one ship to another positioned beyond the unnavigable stretch of river.

“It is tremendously disruptive,” Elmhirst said. “And it’s extraordinary, these miracles of operational and logistics feats.”

Cruise lines may perform amazing work to preserve a journey, she said, but low water in summer increasingly has to be treated as “a known risk factor.”

“There are social media groups about river cruising. There are lots of travelers out there posting about their own experiences. Cruise travelers know what’s going on, and we need to serve them wisely.”

“Communicating it up front,” she said, is “the minimal thing that they need to be doing. But then on a secondary level, I think the really smart move is to change how things are done so that you don’t have to communicate disappointment.”

Instead of selling a conventional summer river cruise and then attempting to preserve it when conditions change, Elmhirst believes operators should consider designing the summer product around a more variable operating environment from the beginning.

“We can’t pretend that we’re going to operate the same as we used to. And I think the only way to do that is to change our approach to seasonality.”

Is Summer Still High Season?

“I want to make it very, very clear,” Elmhirst said. “I LOVE river cruising. It’s a wonderful way to see the world and to see the heart of Europe.”

Her concern is that continuing to design and price the product around historical expectations may eventually work against the passengers the industry wants to attract.

For decades, summer has been treated as prime time for European travel. River cruising inherited much of that traditional calendar.

“I think we need to say, OK, we’re going to call high summer its own season, and we’re going to operate it in a different way and sell it in a different way,” Elmhirst said.

“Maybe we only go to two places and they’re closer together,” she said, “and we experience those places more immersively.”

The difference is that passengers would purchase that experience intentionally.

“We’re giving people a different experience, like a Christmas market river cruise is a different experience,” she said. “And we program it that way, and we sell it that way.”

Summer heat could also change the rhythm of the day.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising more than twice as fast as the global average. Over the past 30 years, Europe has warmed at about 1 degree Fahrenheit per decade, compared with about 0.5 degrees globally, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service and World Meteorological Organization.

Elmhirst noted that river ships are air-conditioned while many European attractions and buildings are not.

During periods of intense heat, she suggests taking passengers outdoors earlier and shifting more indoor activities into the afternoon.

“Bring on siesta,” she said. “Change the rhythm and change the experience.”

Elmhirst also expects more cruising to spread beyond the traditional European river season.

“I think what we’re going to look at is year-round cruising on many of the rivers, where it’s possible,” she said.

She points to operators already moving in that direction. Viking has operated year-round cruises on at least the Rhine, she said, while Transcend plans to operate its ship throughout the year.

“Create different experiences for those different seasons, and market them accordingly,” she said, “so that people don’t expect to get the same experience in the height of a low-water summer that they would in May.”

Protecting Confidence in River Cruising

“I want more customers to book river cruises, but I want river cruise guests to be informed and have good experiences,” she said.

Her prescription goes beyond transparency.

Tell passengers what could happen, certainly. But better yet, build a cruise around what can realistically be delivered consistently. That may become more important as Europe’s river conditions continue to swing between extremes.

The images Elmhirst brought home from Cologne were stark: boats sitting on sediment and bridge supports standing above exposed earth. But her argument is ultimately about what happens before the next video like hers is recorded.

While river cruise companies have repeatedly shown that they can react when conditions make a planned journey difficult, Elmhirst is asking whether the next evolution of river cruising is to stop treating those conditions as exceptions and start designing for a world in which the rivers themselves may dictate a different kind of season.

“I think everybody can win if there is a new approach to river cruising in the summers,” she said.

“I think that the traveler will win. I think the travel advisor will win, and I think that the cruise line will win.”