European Waterways: ‘We Are Not a River Cruise Company’

Derek Banks, founder and managing director of European Waterways, wants one thing understood about the hotel barge company he started in 1977 from a lock house on the Canal du Nivernais in Burgundy: it is not a river cruise company.

“We need to be put in a separate category,” Banks told Cruise Industry News in an interview for the 2027 European River Market Report. “We are not a river cruise company. We literally have think tanks trying to find new words and branding for us, why, because we are just a class of our own, I guess.”

Unlike river cruise ships on Europe’s major waterways, hotel barges navigate historic canals where lock sizes and water depths rule out larger vessels.

The largest hotel barge company in Europe, European Waterways operates 18 barges across nine countries, from the six-passenger Nymphea in the Loire Valley to the 20-passenger La Bella Vita on the Venetian Lagoon and the River Po. The barges cruise at around 4 knots for three to four hours a day, with crew ratios approaching one for every two guests.

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