Inside Abercrombie & Kent’s Multibillion-Dollar Bet on Crystal Cruises

Skift Take The owner of Abercrombie & Kent is using the balance sheet of one of travel’s best asset-light luxury businesses to rebuild Crystal Cruises. Company filings, credit ratings, and bond documents show what that transformation costs. Abercrombie & Kent spent most of its history as a relatively simple kind of luxury travel company. It sold expensive tours and safaris around the world without owning most of the hotels, ships, and other assets its customers used. Its current owner is now taking the company in a different direction. The Lefebvre d’Ovidio family, which bought a majority in A&K in 2019 for $521.1 million, comes from cruising. Manfredi Lefebvre ran Silversea for two decades before selling control to Royal Caribbean. Three years after buying A&K, the family bought Crystal Cruises out of bankruptcy. It has since restarted the cruise line and ordered three new ships. That has brought together two very different businesses. A&K’s touring operation generates cash without requiring large amounts of capital. Building a cruise fleet requires billions of dollars of financing and commitments stretching well into the next decade. The result can now be s