Smooth sailing for Sarina Bratton and Orion Expedition Cruises

When injury cut short the outstanding sporting career of Sarina Bratton, a work holiday in Europe proved the world of tourism her next calling. Bratton, founder of Orion Expedition Cruises shares her own expedition through a sea of opportunity.

Bratton’s vision to develop Australia as both a domestic and international cruise destination with innovative itineraries began on her first cruise voyage through the Caribbean. Struck by the economic benefit generated by the ship’s visit to these remote island nations, she began to question the possibilities for Australia’s remote and regional communities. The Australian based five-star cruise line now provides year round expedition cruises to the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, New Zealand, Asia, the Great Barrier Reef and Antarctica.

Q. How did Orion Expedition Cruises eventually come about?
A. After many years working in the industry with Holland America Cruises and Cunard Line, my passion to develop Australia as both a domestic and international cruise destination strengthened. Unfortunately, there was little interest in Australia by any of the major cruise lines. So, in January 1997, I embarked upon developing an Australian-based four-star cruise operation.

We launched Norwegian Capricorn Line in 1998; a joint venture with the Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) of Miami and another investor. The Norwegian Star then entered service in Australia in December 1998 and so began my first entrepreneurial venture.

In the year 2000, NCL was involved in a hostile takeover and we agreed to dissolve the joint venture. However, I believed we had proven the concept and still wanted to pursue my vision for an Australian-based cruise company. After visiting the Kimberley coast on a friend’s yacht, I saw an opportunity to do something really special by tapping into remote and unexplored regions of Australia and the Antarctic as cruising destinations. Given the lack of infrastructure and pristine wilderness of these areas, I realised we needed to be small, enabling any development to be environmentally sustainable.

At the time, the industry was focused on large scale, overseas cruising and many told me the concept simply would not work. This made me even more determined. It took me two years to find the right ship, ORION.

Q. What advice did you seek when you started the business?
A. Nearly 30 years’ experience in the cruise industry has provided me with the extensive knowledge required for the technical operation of running a cruise ship, as well as an understanding of the key success factors in developing and managing a successful company. One of the great pitfalls in starting any business is increasing your staff levels to cope with the excessive start-up demands. I did some research on US-based start-ups and got a feel for the key elements and roles required from the outset.

Also, the Kimberley region is one of the most challenging operational environments in the world with its inadequately surveyed or unsurveyed waters. I needed to provide comfort to our insurers that we had adequate expertise in the area and mitigate risk, so I sought the advice of one of our investors, Nick Paspaley, who owns pearl farms throughout the Kimberley coast.  

Q. How do you differentiate yourself from competitors?
A. Orion has no direct competitor in Australia. We have developed a market niche balancing on-shore experiences and adventures with onboard levels of luxury and pampering that provides an environment unique to us. Orion is not just Australia’s, but the world’s newest purpose-built expedition cruise ship. This therefore, has seen us internationally recognised as providing one of the best expedition cruise experiences in the world.

Others require a degree of compromise on technical capabilities, space, numbers of service personnel, accommodation, food and wine. Locally, no other service has gone as far as providing an onboard hair dresser, boutique, gym, sauna or masseuse, while Orion manages to offer all this and more.

Certainly, there are other good Australian operators, however they offer very different styles of products to us and they don’t have a five-star ship capable of travelling to the Kimberley, Papua New Guinea and the Antarctic.