Home » News » Afternoon tea with Silversea Cruises’ CEO Roberto Martinoli and CCO Barbara Muckermann

26 April, 2022

Afternoon tea with Silversea Cruises’ CEO Roberto Martinoli and CCO Barbara Muckermann

Portrait of Roberto Martinoli, President and CEO of Silversea Cruises in front of the Silver Dawn's propeller.
Photo by Steve McCurry

Travel Weekly sat down with Barbara Muckermann and Roberto Martinoli, the CCO and CEO of Silversea recently in Sydney to hear their plans for the Australian market.

These two unassuming but uber-sophisticated duo are people you can’t help but be charmed by.

What are you both most excited about as we move back to life per Pandemic?

We’ve been experiencing the comeback since June last year in Europe. So we are now kind of reliving this excitement coming here. We are finally at a stage where things are moving in the right direction and what we are seeing is the very same mechanism that was observed elsewhere – a desire to go back to travel.

We’ve seen a pent-up demand for travel, so as soon as the announcements were made our bookings improved significantly to very exciting levels. So yes, we are back! The Australian market for us is the third market globally and with the kind of growth that we’re facing, we’re really counting on the strength of the cruising market in Australia.

Barbara Muckermann (CCO of Silversea Cruises)

What would you like our market to know about? What you’re doing here at the moment?

I think it is very important to pass the message through that we have been operating very safely and very efficiently without issues since June last year in the Northern Hemisphere. We have generous things in place in case of a COVID positive test. We think the most important message today is that Australians should feel very safe to travel again.

What is one expedition that you both personally loved? And one you can’t wait to do?

We did Galapagos in February which is another incredible experience. What we can say today about Galapagos is that it is probably the only place on Earth that can compete with the Great Barrier Reef in terms of what you see in the water. It’s really a special place and the first thing on my bucket list next is of course, the Kimberley.

Can you tell us more about your culinary programme?

We have travelled deep into our culinary programme to see and learn taste, to really understand this ecosystem around food and culture, so that our passengers can really experience an immersive program. For example, the new luxury is to have authentic sardines out of a can from Sardinia that you won’t experience in a Michelin star restaurant. You take our trips and have an experience that is very authentic and connected to the communities that we’re visiting. In our Greece trip, we offer 30 local wines from Greece. We were not sure how good Greek wines is, but after trying and experiencing the history with the Greek Sommelier, it was incredible.

And tell us about your Food Anthropologist?

Our food anthropologist keeps us honest and make sure that we are doing the right things. There is a cooking school that is not so much about teaching how to cook but more about understanding the reason why those are the ingredients. In Ecuador, we can only have Ecuadorian supplies, it’s very difficult to import anything, it’s almost impossible. So we created a menu that was based on the local ingredients, and even more so Galapagos where you cannot introduce anything. The menu is authentic and immersive. It also gives you another lens to the destination.

Silversea Cruises’ food anthropologist is Adam Sachs (former Editor in Chief of Saveur Magazine), and the new culinary programme he spearheads is called S.A.L.T – which stands for Sea And Land Taste.

Learn more about Silversea Cruises’ itineraries HERE.

Featured Image: Barbara Muckermann (Supplied)

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Barbara Muckermann Roberto Martinoli Silversea Cruise silversea cruises