Sun Queen
 The sun queen in the home port
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The motor ship Sonnenkönigin is a passenger ship on Lake Constance . His home port is Bregenz . The ship was put into service on September 18, 2008. The owner is the Vorarlberger Walter Klaus GmbH & Co KG of the tourism entrepreneur Walter Klaus (1934–2012), who in 2005 took over the Bodenseeschifffahrt of the ÖBB .
The Sonnenkönigin counts according to the manufacturer of the largest passenger ships in the Central European inland waters.
history
Construction and commissioning
The Sun Queen was commissioned as an event ship with five decks from the Bodan shipyard in Kressbronn in summer 2006 . The commissioning planned for 2007 was delayed by over a year, the construction costs estimated at approx. 8.5 million euros at the start of construction amounted to around 13 million euros at the end of the day.
The ship was christened on September 18, 2008 by Bettina Bernadotte .
The maiden voyage led from Bregenz via Friedrichshafen and Romanshorn to Rorschach .
commitment
Since its commissioning, the Sun Queen has been used for events and charter traffic on Lake Constance.
In the course of the global financial crisis, the Sun Queen , built for luxury events and company presentations, was only chartered 40 times in the first year of operation. The estimated charter costs of originally 200,000 euros per day were reduced by 40,000 and 27,000 euros to 18,000 euros in the end, with an additional per capita fee of 35 euros to be paid. With a capacity of almost eleven percent, the success of the concept fell far short of expectations. A profitable operation did not materialize, in the end it was only about cost recovery. That is why the ship was leased to the Vorarlberg catering company Mo Catering GmbH in September 2009 for an initial period of three years and the marketing company “Sonnenkönigin AG”, based in St. Gallen, was dissolved. The daily lease for the ship and the four-person crew amounts to a basic price of around 12,000 euros.
The Bodensee-Schiffsbetriebe (BSB), which do not own a ship of this size themselves, were not interested in leasing the Sun Queen , but see in her no competition, but rather an enrichment for Lake Constance shipping. For the Schweizerische Bodensee-Schiffahrtsgesellschaft (SBS AG) it does not represent any competition either, since the Klaus Holding, operated by Walter Klaus, had a 40 percent stake in SBS; this is also operated by the Austrian Vorarlberg Lines (VL). In October 2009 Klaus announced his retirement and transferred his company shares to his holding manager Werner Netzer.
By 2013 a total of 200 events with around 100,000 visitors had taken place. The marketing has been outsourced in the meantime.
Before that, there were considerations of dismantling the Sun Queen and letting it sail on Lake Geneva or Lake Zurich ; However, these were immediately discarded for reasons of cost and prestige.
incident
- At the end of June 2009, the same man tried twice to kidnap the Sun Queen . The man had previously fled from an Austrian clinic where he was receiving psychiatric treatment. On July 5, 2009, he was picked up by German customs during a routine inspection in an InterCity and arrested.
design
The "floating concert hall" was designed by the Idea Design Team from Wangen im Allgäu . It is considered unconventional and controversial. The mirrored glass surface of the ball and congress hall on three decks has broken with many of the traditions of shipbuilding on Lake Constance:
the silhouette of the sun queen is unconventionally oriented towards the front instead of sloping backwards as usual from the main deck to the upper deck. Inside the ball and congress hall there is a completely open space, with two upper decks serving as a gallery. There is a height-adjustable grandstand and a stage on the main deck. In addition to a galley, there are also four bars available. The Sun Queen is marketed as a charter ship in the premium event sector, the advertising slogan is: "Floating All Senses".
See also
Web links
- Official website of the Sun Queen
- Official 360 degree photo tour of the Sun Queen
- The sun queen on bodenseeschifffahrt.de
- The sun queen on the side of Vorarlberg Lines-Bodenseeschifffahrt
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Germanischer Lloyd AG: Technical and administrative data of the "Sun Queen". (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 14, 2011 ; Retrieved July 14, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Height over everything: 11.2 meters
- ↑ The information varies from 900 to 1100 tons with payload
- ↑ Information from the owner , accessed on November 28, 2010
- ↑ a b c Sun Queen: Biggest event ship flops (September 4, 2009)
- ↑ a b c Sun Queen picks up speed again. The new structure is intended to make luxury ships affordable for mere mortals . In: Südkurier of September 12, 2009
- ↑ a b Sun Queen . In: Südkurier of September 12, 2009
- ^ Tragedy on the Haggen in Lochau: Entrepreneur Walter Klaus is dead (April 17, 2012)
- ↑ After five years, the Sun Queen takes stock on ORF on October 7, 2013, accessed on October 7, 2013.
- ^ Customs arrests wanted kidnappers of the "Sun Queen" (www.zoll.de; July 6, 2009)
