Everything you ever wanted to know...
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Liverpool. 24 July 1990.
Turn it into a floating hotel?
I had to google to find this thread, I still can't figure out the indexing here. Anyway, I don't usually "cross post", but have posted this on SSC and wondered if anyone here also had ideas about it.
My idea is to find out if there is a market for a "floating hotel" ferry with cabins that you could sleep in - so you could board at Liverpool, go for a cruise and then it would spend the night at Seacombe or Woodside before returning you to Liverpool in the morning. It would have its own bar, restaurant and obsevation lounge. Maybe the old Royal Iris could be converted? It would be a really strong business: cruises during the day and evening, and hotel at night. Easyhotels have shown you can create nice rooms in tiny spaces, so it's not necessary to have huge cabins for just one nights stay.
Currently you can charter one of the ferries for a few thousand quid for the evening, some companies do it for events, and I think that is going to be a growing business with all the conferences in Liverpool from the convention centre. Say 40 cabins @ £100 a night, that is £4,000 a night, and the boat could probably make the same again with morning and afternoon cruises in busy periods and dinners / drinks at night. If it earned say £8,000 a day/night for the busier half the year, and just £4,000 a day/night for the quieter half of the year (ie an average of £6k daily throughout the year) that would be a turnover of £2.2million pounds.
There might also be a bit of demand for day trips down to Llandundno, which would add to the tourist offer for people staying in Liverpool. Tourists could sail back overnight after a nice day out in north Wales, seeing the glorious Liverpool Bay sunset while they enjoy their drinks and meal on the boat and enjoying a world-famous view of Liverpool over breakfast. Companies could hire it for "overnight" staff away days, which might work out cheaper than doing it on land, or it might also be hired for those companies who want a "captive market" of corporate guests and customers at conferences, eg for evening meal, corporate video etc........although of course you could always jump ship at the Wirral side and get a cab back to town if you did feel a bit trapped I suppose.
It could also be chartered for weddings, and people spend stupid amounts of money on wedding receptions these days. People could get married in mid-river, have their wedding reception onboard whilst cruising the river, drop off guests at the Pier Head and Wirral at various points in the evening, and the remaining drunken guests who were staying in the cabins could all sleep it off on the boat without the hassle of taxis or getting to hotels etc. I think there would be enough uses to keep demand high year round, which would be important to the economics of the thing. You might close it for a month or two for maintenance work in January and Feb I suppose, if demand was too low, and lay off the casual staff. A staff-sharing deal with the Mersey Ferries might be useful for them and this company. (I don't know the law on this, but if sea burials are allowed, it could also be chartered for funerals, at least tipping ashes into the river / bay if not whole bodies, although presumably that would be a short one hour cruise rather than an overnight thing, and you might not want to publicise that too widely as it might sound a bit gruesome...point I am making is that I think there are dozens of groups of people and companies who might find profitable uses for such a boat).
http://www.ferryphotos.co.uk/pages/royaliris.htm How many cabins could you get into that boat, leaving space for a large meeting room/bar/restaurant and observation lounge? The economics would I suppose depend upon how big you could go, because a lot of the costs (eg maritime and catering staff, fuel, berthing costs, maintenance) would be fixed anyway. Do you think you could fit 60 cabins in there, say 40 with window views and 20 without? That would make a dramatic change to my back of envelope calculation of £2.2m turnover, which was based on 40 cabins, and its profitability. If the old Royal Iris isn't big enough, there must be loads of larger boats that would be suitable knocking about? Mind you, the value of a boat that the Beatles played on should not be under-estimated, and if it can't be turned into a cruise-hotel-ferry thing, it should certainly be brought back as a floating hotel and be berthed in one of the South Docks. Unlike the replica Cavern, this is the real thing.
Mersey Ferries 1980's Catamaran
Does anyone remember the Catamaran that was trialed by Mersey Ferries in the mid 1980's she was red and white in colour and had an aircraft type interior with all the seats facing the same way. Boy was it fast! I think she came from Scotland. I used to go on it all the time when I was a young lad. It didn't last very long before it was withdrawn as apparently it wasn't very good in rough weather and it couldn't handle the Mersey at its worst, so the original Ferries were restored to their tasks!:snf (41):
