PONANT

An Introduction from DeSalvio Travel At DeSalvio Travel, we have been developing our Polar Knowledge project because we believe that planning a journey to the Arctic or Antarctica should involve more than choosing an itinerary. The more we learn from people who have spent years working in these regions, the more we understand how much there is to know before you ever step aboard a ship. That is why we were particularly grateful to PONANT for making this conversation with Cind

The name Charcot is familiar to anyone looking at modern polar expeditions, particularly through PONANT’s Le Commandant Charcot. But Jean-Baptiste Charcot was not simply the person whose name was later given to a ship. He was a French explorer working at a time when polar exploration, scientific research and European ambition were closely connected. His expeditions were built around exploration, mapping and the collection of new scientific information. That combination is wha

Before sailing with PONANT, my idea of an expedition cruise was fairly extreme. I associated the word with the Arctic, crossing the Drake Passage, icebreakers and voyages towards 90 degrees north. I imagined expedition cruising as something that required a certain tolerance for hardship. My Mediterranean sailing from Valletta to Nice changed that understanding. PONANT is an expedition cruise company, but expedition can mean much more than reaching the most remote point on a m

The first thing I learned about life aboard a PONANT ship had nothing to do with the itinerary. It had to do with my shirts. I had spent about an hour ironing them at our hotel before boarding. Then we discovered that we had been invited to the captain’s table on the first evening. I checked the shirts again. They were wrinkled from the journey, and all that ironing had been undone. Five minutes after arriving in our cabin, I called for assistance. The crew member came immedi

When Marisa and I returned from our stroll in Elba and looked back at the ship, we said almost simultaneously: that is the most beautiful boat I’ve ever seen. I had not expected to have that reaction to a cruise ship. But Le Dumont-d’Urville has a presence that makes you feel slightly special simply by being on board. The design is elegant without being showy, and the scale creates an atmosphere that feels much closer to a private yacht or boutique hotel than to the conventio

One of the most interesting conversations I had on Le Dumont-d’Urville happened in a hallway. I had been wondering about something that seemed unusual to me. We saw a relatively small vessel floating, far out at sea, and I wanted to know how ships like ours communicate with other vessels in such circumstances. I asked the captain, whom I bumped into shortly after, expecting perhaps a short answer. Instead, he took the time to explain how maritime communication works, the obl

Some ships are designed to take you somewhere. Le Commandant Charcot was designed to take you somewhere that is exceptionally difficult to reach while allowing you to remain comfortable along the way. That is what initially attracted me to the concept. A luxury icebreaker travelling through polar waters, dealing with the elements while passengers can still enjoy refined accommodation, good food and the comforts of a luxury hotel is a remarkable combination. I have not sailed

European exploration has always fascinated me. The more you read about the early explorers, the more respect you develop for what they actually undertook. These were people who sometimes set out knowing that they might not return. They travelled without the communications, technology, medical support and logistical infrastructure that we take for granted today. If something went wrong, there was a very real possibility that they were simply lost. Look at Jeanne Baret, the fir

One of the things that first caught my attention about PONANT’s scientific program was the idea itself: take a luxury travel platform and use its access to remote parts of the world to support scientific research. I find that genuinely interesting. PONANT has created a situation where the passenger experience and scientific work can exist alongside one another. Scientists can use the ship as a platform for research, while passengers can encounter those scientists, hear about

One of the strange things about sustainability at sea is that the better it is integrated into the operation, the less the passenger sees. When we sailed on Le Dumont-d’Urville, we experienced the ship as a luxury vessel. The cabins were comfortable, the food was very good, the service was attentive and everything felt remarkably smooth. But underneath that experience is an enormous amount of operational work. Waste has to be handled. Water has to be managed. Food has to be t

Sustainability is one of those subjects in travel that can quickly become a checklist. Less plastic. Lower emissions. Better waste management. More efficient ships. All of these things matter, but for us the more interesting question is what responsible luxury actually looks like when you are on board. When I sailed on Le Dumont-d’Urville, I was aware that much of what PONANT was doing environmentally would not be visible to me as a passenger. The systems designed to reduce e

For me, dining is never only about the food. It starts with the welcome, then the atmosphere, and only then the cooking. On PONANT, those first two impressions were excellent from the beginning. We were fortunate to be invited to the captain's table on our first evening, with Marisa seated next to the charismatic captain, and we were treated exceptionally well. The food lived up to the setting. I would not compare it with a two-Michelin-star restaurant, but that is not really

When you see the name Alain Ducasse associated with a luxury cruise line, the obvious question is whether it actually changes anything. For me, the answer is that it should. Ducasse is one of the most prestigious names in the international restaurant world, but simply putting a famous chef's name next to a cruise brand would not be enough. What interests me about the PONANT relationship is the idea behind it: how do you maintain a high culinary standard when the restaurant is

One of the things that first made me genuinely excited about PONANT was its approach to curated voyages. It is easy for a cruise company to put a guest speaker on a program and call the experience educational. That is not what interests me. What I find interesting about PONANT is the possibility of bringing the right people, the right subject and the right destination together, and then allowing the relationship to continue beyond the scheduled lecture. For travelers who are

I don't think you have to stand at the North Pole or climb Everest to call yourself an explorer. For me, exploration is about experiencing something genuinely new and, at the same time, pushing beyond your own limits. Every day without learning something new is, in some sense, a day not fully lived. Travel gives us an opportunity to do that on a much larger scale. That is why the relationship between PONANT and The Explorers Club interests me. It takes exploration out of the

One of the easiest mistakes in luxury travel is to start with the product. A beautiful ship catches your attention. An itinerary looks extraordinary. The photographs are impressive. But none of that tells us whether it is actually the right experience for you. When we recommend PONANT, we start somewhere else: with the traveler. We want to know what interests you, what you value, how you like to travel and what you actually want to experience. We can usually find an itinerary

Before sailing with PONANT, I had an assumption that I suspect many people have: that it was primarily designed for an older generation. I was 36 when I sailed Le Dumont-d’Urville, and I felt completely at home. The experience did not feel stuffy or old-fashioned. It felt modern, personal and comfortable, while still being very strongly connected to French culture and PONANT's identity. I would happily do it again. That experience changed the way I think about the question of

For me, the best service is often the service you barely notice. When we arrived for our PONANT sailing, we arrived early. The crew immediately took care of our luggage, which meant that we could simply leave it behind and spend the rest of the day having lunch with friends. We did not have to think about where the bags were going, whether they had arrived in the cabin or what we needed to do next. That sounds like a small thing. It is not. Good luxury travel removes friction

An excursion on a cruise is often thought of as something that happens between the ship and the next sailing. With PONANT, I think it is more useful to look at it as part of the entire expedition experience. On our three-day sailing from Malta to Nice aboard Le Dumont-d’Urville, we had one formal excursion, in Elba. But the experiences that stayed with me were much broader: seeing Stromboli smoking heavily, watching a pod of dolphins suddenly appear alongside the ship, talkin

When I first became interested in PONANT, the classical music connection immediately caught my attention. As a classical pianist, I have always felt that music is an important part of cultural travel, and seeing a brand like PONANT work with world-class artists made the company particularly interesting to me. Then I started looking more closely at the ships, itineraries and overall philosophy. It became clear that this was a cruise company I could genuinely see myself recomme