“Our core business is tourism to Iceland; we are Iceland specialists,” said Gudmundur Kjartansson, managing director and owner of Iceland ProCruises and Iceland ProTravel. “No one has ever done what we are doing, which is selling circumnavigation cruise trips around Iceland.”

The company will make its debut in 2015, running a summer season in the North Atlantic of mainly 10-day cruises exclusively into Icelandic ports roundtrip from Reykjavik. Six 10-day voyages were scheduled at press time, along with a single 11-day cruise and two trips to Greenland.

“This is absolutely unique,” continued Kjartansson. “There are cruise lines that may stop in Iceland, but no one is doing it the way we are, with a focus on Iceland and using Reykjavik as the hub.”

Those 10-day voyages are priced between $2,500 and $3,500, as the new start-up cruise line has a three-year charter contract through 2017 to run a May to September season with the Ocean Diamond, managed by FleetPro.

Selling Iceland tourism for 20 some years, Kjartansson said he had been working on a cruise project for a while.

“We could not find the right vessel,” he noted. “It needed to be a certain size, small enough to fit into the harbors, but large enough not to be too expensive. The Ocean Diamond, at 220 passengers, is the optimal size for us.”

Voyages are port intensive, with no sea days on Iceland circumnavigations. On two Greenland voyages, the cruise line plans to offer a lecture program on sea days.

With the focus on filling the ship at premium pricing in 2015, Kjartansson said he had already sold two full-ship charters in 2016 during a November (2014) interview.