Meet the Team at Small Ship Cruises
Testimonials and Comments
Look Who Is Talking About Us in the Press
A Little about the Site

SMALLSHIPCRUISES.COM is a unique website created by experienced writers who have a wide knowledge of the small ship niche of the cruise industry. The owners and writers have traveled on ships all over the world so that the information on the website comes from personal in-depth research and hands-on experience. The website has been written about in many newspapers, magazines, and website media, including the New York Times, USA Today, Newsday,  the Today Show, Travel & Leisure, Porthole Magazine, Marco Polo Magazine, Cruise Travel Magazine, Forbes Traveler, Savvy Travel, Seattle Times, St Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Toronto Star, Cincinnati Enquirer, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, SmarterTravel.com, and many others. Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel calls us “a great site”, and Best Fares Magazine says “a great collection of news, deals & discounts”. The Today Show featured the site as " one stop shopping for small ships". It has been named one of the Web’s Most Useful Travel Sites by Boardroom.com and has been featured in reviews on Excite, Lycos, about.com, and Netscape.

The company and the website offers information on cruising in small ships to out-of-the-way places all over the world. It is not a travel agency itself, but works with various expert agencies, wholesalers, tour operators and cruiselines to aid in getting people booked to the destinations they want. The company is incorporated in Florida, with offices in St. Petersburg.

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT ALL HAPPEN AT SMALL SHIP CRUISES

Bob Linde – Bob, the founder of Small Ship Cruises, is an avid sailor. While running the recreation department for the University of South Florida, he developed courses in navigation, advanced sailing, and canoeing. As a travel writer he has visited unique destinations such as the Peruvian Amazon, Northern European waterways, Alaska, and the Galapagos Islands, to name a few. Bob spent 5 years in the US Army, including 3 years in Europe and 6 months on the front lines of Desert Storm. He has also worked as a counselor for troubled youths, a commercial fisherman and Greenpeace activist. Small ship cruising opened his eyes to the unique unspoiled cultures that only small ships allow you to experience. When he realized the lack of information available to the growing numbers of travelers interested in adventure travel and interacting with different cultures and environments, Small Ship Cruises was born. "This is a site for everyone – travel agent, veteran cruiser, new cruiser or arm-chair cruiser," he says. "Pull up a chair and approach the website as the start of your adventure. We are only an e-mail away."  Bob also is president of Acupunture & Herbal Therapies in St. Petersburg (www.acuherbals.com).

Shirley Linde is current president of the company and editor of SmallShipCruises.com. She has written books on both science and travel, many of which are best-sellers and are translated into languages around the world. Among the books she has authored or contributed to are No More Sleepless Nights, No More Snoring, Dr. Atkins' Superenergy Diet, The Whole Health Catalogue, The Charleston Weight-loss Program, The World’s Most Intimate Cruises, Great Voyages of the World, and The Insiders' Guide to the World's Most Exciting Cruises. Shirley has received several outstanding service awards in communications, and is listed in Who's Who in America, the World Who's Who of Women, Who's Who of Contemporary Authors, and Foremost Women of the 20th Century. She lived on an outisland of the Bahamas for five years, and now when not traveling, she lives a few feet from the water in   downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. See also: shirleylinde.com.

Scott Linde is responsible for  the corporate charter division of Small Ship Cruises Inc., arranging for long term charter of vessels or for short term charter for use of ships as floating hotels for special events, for meetings at sea for corporate or other groups and for corporate incentive award cruises.  Scott has years of experience in the corporate world and is known for his product design and development in many areas, especially working for more than 20 years in the leathergoods industry. Scott has been a world traveler throughout his corporate life and helped pioneer the U.S. leathergoods industry in Asia, the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico.  He also handles Small Ship Cruises requests for dive boats and fishing expeditions to unique places.  Scott is an avid scuba diver and fisherman and has dived in the U.S., Bahamas, Caribbean, Mexico and Thailand.

Rebecca Falkenberry, of Hills Travel Service in St. Petersburg, handles many of the booking requests that come in to the Small Ship Cruises website. She specializes in adventure travel, upscale leisure travel, and small ships to exotic places. Rebecca is a former university professor and national Sierra Club board member, for several years has been listed in Conde Nast Traveler magazine as "One of 100 best travel agents in US" and in Travel and Leisure magazine as one of Top 70 Travel agents in the US.

Other associates are experts in yacht charters, river barges, self-drives and buying and selling vessels.

ABOUT THE SITE … THE BIGGEST WEBSITE IN THE WORLD ON SMALL SHIPS

The SMALLSHIPCRUISES.COM website features small ships and off-the-beaten-path cruising and has the most complete and up-to-date information found anywhere on small ships. The site features in-depth reports on small ships throughout the world, with information on cabins, activities, itineraries, shore excursions, rates, and discount policies. Hundreds of ships and cruises are listed that can be searched by cruise line or destination, or by special interest such as barges, river cruises, sailing ships, dive boats, wheelchair-accessible vessels, and other niche themes. The website is supported by viewers requesting cruise reservations through the site which are forwarded to associates in specialist companies who are experts in various areas and who make the reservations. The site is also supported by a bookstore where you can buy any book or video, and a section where you can make hotel and air reservations and book shore excursions before you take a cruise.

The site has unique information on cruising found on no other site and the expert associates can book people on cruises to remote places where they can relate to the environment and to the cultures of the people. Today’s travelers want something different, they want to travel in small groups, they want to know about the history, and music and ecology of the places they visit and to get to know the people. They want travel to broaden their knowledge and connect them to the rest of world as well as fulfill their dreams, and smallshipcruises.com offers them the way. Where else but by ship can you kayak up to a glacier, go by dugout canoe to a jungle village, play with a two-toed sloth pet of a family on the Amazon River, feed bananas to lemurs jumping on your shoulder and then come back to a hot shower, a dance on the aft deck, a good meal and a comfortable bed?

The SmallShipCruises.com site can be licensed for redistribution in non-English languages, as can TheCruiseChef.com, another website owned by Small Ship Cruises Inc. that has favorite recipes of cruise chefs and news of culinary and wine cruises. A Directory of Small Ships is available for purchase which has contact information at small ship companies, with phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, and links to cruise company websites. Cruise Reports are available for purchase by editors.

The site has special help for corporations and other large groups who wish to charter a whole ship and has programs for Meetings At Sea and for Floating Hotels at major events in port cities.

The website is reaching an audience of sophisticated experienced travelers from all over the world as well as members of the cruise industry. People are coming to the site from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and countries of Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. The website has more than 100,000 page visits per month and outstanding placement on search engines under many keywords, creating an opportunity for cruise companies to place ads on their latest itineraries and fares to reach these qualified potential clients.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Small Ship Cruises Inc
Suite 601
100 Beach Dr NE
St Petersburg FL 33701

Email Us


LOOK WHO IS TALKING ABOUT US IN THE PRESS

Small Ship Cruises has been written about in the following publications:

Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel Online
New York Times
USA Today
Newsday
Seattle Times
St Petersburg Times
Tampa Tribune
Travel & Leisure Magazine
Toronto Star
San Diego Union-Tribune
Best Fares Magazine
Best Fares Online
Cincinnati Enquirer
New York Daily News
Travel World International Magazine
East West News Bureau
The Mature Traveler
Detroit Metro Connections
Atlanta Journal & Constitution
Marco Polo Magazine
Porthole Magazine
The Business Journal
Business-Journal.com
Salon Travel
Salon.com
Travelers Newsletter
dbusiness.com
The Group Travel Leader
Meeting News
Cruise News
Cruise Voyager
Cruise Travel Magazine
Mining Co Guide to Budget Travel
Cruise & Vacation Views
BottomLine Secrets
Cincinnati.com
The Wheelhouse
TravelRoads.com
TravelTrade.com
Travel Weekly
BestEzines.com
CruiseMates.com
TourandTravelNews.com
OSSN.com
AOL News
Prow’s Edge
Travel Writers International Newsletter
Arthur Frommer’s Online Newsletter
Recommend
About.com
Snap.com
CLIA Newsletter
Cruise Voyager
Travel-library.com
DailyCompany.com
Bottom Line/Personal
Web Surfer Travel Journal
TheWorkingVacation.com
Biz-Yahoo.com
News.excite.com
AOL News
Newscom.com
Excite Travel News
ThriftyTraveler.com
ASTA Magazine
Travel Writers International Newsletter
Travelthenet
Travel Savvy Magazine
Elegant Living
Various radio programs, including Francis Harris and KVAD’s pack Your Bags


TESTIMONIALS and COMMENTS

Your website looks terrific! We greatly appreciate being included in the site and all the hard work you put into creating and maintaining our pages.
-- Amy George, Clipper Cruise Line

A really useful web site … covers the world of small ship cruising, some at bargain prices.
-- Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel Online Newsletter

Your rankings in the search engines are awesome.
-- Kim P., The Working Vacation

It's great and full of such good information.
-- Uniworld

I want to thank you for the excellent article … You are really lucid, and snap up a lot of correct information!
-- Tom Carlson, Sea Dream Yacht Club

Excellent story on our Central  America trip.  Wow! very thorough coverage!
-- World Explorer Cruises

Your website is so very helpful!  Thank you for the excellence!!!
-- Denise B., Director of Tourism, Anchorage Convention &Visitors Bureau

You have found a genuine need and niche in the travel industry … a unique product.
-- Richard G., MD

An amazing website ... Much thanks for what you do.
-- David Peevers, contributing writer/photographer, Lonely Planet books

The ultimate resource for information on small ship cruises.
-- Marco Polo Magazine

Congratulations for seeing the need and providing this service.
-- Wade B

Thank you for your help during our marketing research study. Our group could not have completed the study without your assistance.
-- Stephanie S., University of Texas at Austin

As soon as the page comes up, there’s an immediate sense of the sea, of cruising and of wanting to book something right away ... Congratulations on a really neat site!
-- Kevin Retief, Prowsedge

Thank you, Small Ship Cruises, for your suggestions, and keep them coming.
-- Priscilla P., San Francisco

When we cruise in the future we would like to do all booking through you.
-- Tom and Lis R.

You have a fascinating website supported by many years of valuable cruise ship experience.
-- Tony Jones, Publisher, AdventureGuide

Thank you for your attention to our interests. It is reassuring to know that all is set.
-- Charles V. M.

Mahalo Akua ho’omaik’I, nui a me mau! (Thanks! God bless, much and always!)
-- Keoki G.

We are delighted with your quick service and ability to promptly book the trip we wanted.
-- Tom and Kay S., Lacanada CA

Love the look of your page. It’s very informative and professional. Keep up the good work …So much to see, so little time!
-- Roger W., Utah

Thank you for everything. We will book a cruise with you again.
—Clara T., Miami FL

I love your site.
-- Hytham S., Denmark

Thank you and best regards.
-- Was S., Japan

I really enjoy your website. It’s the most informative I’ve found. Thanks again.
-- Marge P.

Thank you for your really kindly way to help us to make the cruise decision. I feel all is clear and OK.
-- Julio A., Buenos Aires

Thanks for getting back so quickly! I’m impressed!
-- Kathy J., Westport CT

Thank you for your prompt response and excellent service. I will keep your e-mail address on file.
-- Richard K.

Your display of cruise options was very helpful. We will continue to explore and enjoy your small ship cruises.
-- R. F.

We very much like the arrangements for our 50th anniversary trip … Thanks again!
-- Mr. And Mrs. Charles M., Michigan

You have been very kind to spend so much time and energy on my dreams and I am sure that in the near future I will be seeing the places that call to me.
-- Shanti H., Beaverton OR

I thank you very much again for your help.
-- Santha K., Malaysia

Thank you for your help, maybe we will be able to do another cruise on our 1 year anniversary.
-- Kara S.

A very good, professional job! Congrats.
-- Ed T., St. Petersburg FL

Thanks for all your help … looking forward to a continuing relationship.
-- Dave M.

We will be contacting you again.
-- Bob P., Key Biscayne FL

Thanks for making all the arrangements. Good negotiating.
-- Kathy J.

We appreciate your professionalism.
-- Barbara R.

This website is incredible.
-- Lindsey W, Canada


Meet the Team at Small Ship Cruises
Testimonials and Comments
Look Who Is Talking About Us in the Press
A Little about the Site

To advertise in SmallShipCruises.com contact Linde@smallshipcruises.com

To book a cruise, go to http://smallshipcruises.com/travelform.shtml

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