Company history

EUROPEAN CRUISE SERVICE has been the market leader for approx. 150 years, catering for cruise ships in Norway and Scandinavia. Its origin goes back to the 1850’ies when Thomas Bennett established the second travel agency in the world, Bennett Reisebureau A/S, in Christiania, as the capital of Norway was called in those days. Perhaps no man has done more to form the modern travel industry than Thomas Bennett, the colourful expatriate and well-travelled Englishman who made Norway his home.

Thomas Bennett

The cruise service business became of vital importance during the last decades of the 19th century with cruising along the Norwegian coast and into the fjords of Western Norway. In the summer of 1887, M/S “St.Sunniva” set out on her maiden voyage, the first vessel in the world that had been designed and built specifically as a cruise ship. For the next 20 years, “St. Sunniva” sailed to the fjords and northward to Lofoten and the North Cape letting her passengers see the magic of the sun that never set. From this time on Norway was known as “the land of the midnight sun”. In fact, most of the cruise destinations we know today where firmly established by 1914.

The cruise business reached its preliminary peak before the outbreak of the 1.World War. No one could have found a better salesman for Norway than Kaiser Wilhelm II. Inspired by him, many Germans cruised the Norwegian coast. The 1909 record of 112 cruise ship visits to the Geirangerfjord held all the way until 1991!

Wilhelm Rosasco

As the business regained its force in the twenties and thirties, the cruise business part of Bennett Reisebureau became a vital component of the company, not least thanks to the managing director Wilhelm Rosasco who managed the company from Bergen where he developed Bennett’s cruise services into a fine art.

Trygve Kordt

During the period between 1960-1990 Bennett Cruise Service, under the management of the legendary Trygve Kordt, became a world-leading company in its field. During this period the cruise industry went through a revolutionary development becoming a common leisure product both in Europe and the USA. As the business has developed, Bennett Cruise Service was sold out of the main company, Bennett Reisebureau, in 1996 and changed its name to European Cruise Service in January 2001 under its Managing Director, Arthur Kordt. The change of name was the symbol of the company’s ambition to extend its field of operation, as the world gradually grows smaller.

Arthur Kordt

EUROPEAN CRUISE SERVICE is still the market leader in shore excursion operations and ships agency services rendered to cruiseships calling upon ports in Scandinavia and aim to keep and strengthen this position for years to come.