Toni Stoeckl Wants to Bring a Hotelier’s Eye to River Cruising
The former Starwood Hotels executive is drawing on decades of experience in luxury hospitality to broaden AmaWaterways’ audience and rethink the river-cruise experience.
AmaVerde on the Danube River. Photo: Courtesy of AmaWaterways
After years spent shaping some of hospitality’s best-known lifestyle and luxury brands, Toni Stoeckl is applying a hotelier’s eye to a very different kind of guest room: one that moves.
Stoeckl joined AmaWaterways this spring as chief creative and marketing officer after nearly four years as CMO of Starwood Hotels, where he worked across 1 Hotels, Baccarat Hotels and Treehouse Hotels and helped relaunch the Starwood name. Earlier in his career, he worked on brands including W Hotels, St. Regis, and The Luxury Collection before joining Marriott International, where his portfolio included Edition, AC Hotels, Aloft, Element, and the creation of Moxy Hotels.
Now, his remit is broader than simply selling more river cruises. Stoeckl sees an opportunity to draw on decades of hospitality experience to reconsider how travelers encounter AmaWaterways, from the moment they discover the company to the onboard experience.
“I think part of it is also just generally thinking about what does the true end-to-end experience look like when you have a brand coming along with it,” Stoeckl told Luxury Travel Report during an interview at Virtuoso Travel Week in Las Vegas. “It’s the next generation of Ama.”
That approach comes as AmaWaterways enters a period of substantial change: the company has already refreshed its brand identity, is developing new ships and destinations, and plans to renovate eight existing vessels this winter. For Stoeckl, who describes AmaWaterways’ ships as essentially “boutique hotels on the river,” the next phase is about giving that experience a more distinctive point of view.
It also means introducing river cruising to travelers who may not currently see themselves in it. Stoeckl acknowledged that river cruising has been somewhat slower than ocean cruising to reach a broader demographic, but said that is changing quickly.
“It is a little bit behind of what the trend has been, but it’s accelerating faster now more than ever,” he said. “We’re getting to introduce river-cruising to a much broader cohort.”
Importantly, he does not frame that expansion simply in terms of age. AmaWaterways is seeing multigenerational groups that can include up to four generations traveling together, he said. The format of a river cruise, where family members can split up for different activities during the day and reconvene afterward, lends itself particularly well to those groups.
One guest might stay on board, another might take a bike ride, and another might explore independently. At the end of the day, Stoeckl said, “you have still a shared experience. Because now you talk about that. You tell the stories.”
Designing Experiences, Not Just Excursions
One of the clearest indications of where AmaWaterways is headed is a recent hire Stoeckl discussed during the conversation: an employee dedicated specifically to experience design, with a background in Disney Imagineering and Airbnb Experiences. The goal is to rethink what travelers actually do in a destination—and how to make more intimate experiences available to more guests.
AmaWaterways already offers opportunities that go beyond conventional touring, such as entering a local home to make pastries. The challenge, Stoeckl said, is figuring out how to deliver those types of experiences at scale without stripping away what makes them appealing in the first place.
Colombia offers perhaps the clearest example of that philosophy. AmaWaterways began operating on the Magdalena River in 2025, becoming the first passenger cruise operator on the river in decades. Its two small ships, AmaMagdalena and AmaMelodia, carry just 60 and 64 guests, respectively.
Stoeckl said the company’s approach there has been to build experiences alongside communities rather than arrive with a predetermined idea of what visitors should see. “We really built this with the communities,” he said, describing the resulting experience as “a slice of life” that allows travelers to engage with places on terms shaped by the people who live there.
That same philosophy is behind AmaWaterways’ City Escapes, which give travelers more time in larger cities before or after their river journey. Instead of racing through major destinations, Stoeckl wants guests to have enough time to see some of the ordinary life that continues beyond the visitor circuit.
“Cities don’t stop because of the tourists,” he said. “Life continues, so now you get [to see] the life in a different way. People are very intrigued by that.”
Getting Advisors Onboard
Expanding the audience for river cruising will also require getting more travel advisors comfortable selling it.
Stoeckl recognizes the problem: advisors are inundated with information from hotels, cruise lines, tour operators and other suppliers, making it unrealistic for them to become experts on every product.
“It would be foolish or unreasonable to expect them to be an expert in everything,” he said. AmaWaterways’ responsibility, as he sees it, is to provide as much turnkey information as possible, from its AmaAcademy training program to marketing materials advisors can easily use with clients.
But Stoeckl believes there is still one sales tool that cannot be replicated by a training module, email, or social media template: firsthand experience. “There’s nothing that can replace that,” he said.
That relationship with advisors is also feeding back into the company itself. Stoeckl said advisor feedback has influenced changes to AmaWaterways’ new website and refreshed brand, and conversations about how the advisor community is being served regularly reach senior leadership meetings.
“Feedback is a gift,” he told LTR. “The advisors tell us when something is going incredibly well, and they tell us when it’s not.”
That relationship becomes particularly important when things go wrong. Low water on European rivers has required AmaWaterways to adjust itineraries this year, but Stoeckl said the company has so far avoided canceling sailings. Depending on conditions, guests may be transferred between sister ships or portions of an itinerary may operate by coach, with cruise managers adapting plans as conditions change.
For Stoeckl, those disruptions are another part of the end-to-end guest experience he is now charged with considering. Weather may be outside the company’s control; how the company responds to it is not.
“It’s more how we deal with this,” he said, “and making them feel cared for.”
It is a philosophy familiar from luxury hotels, where the moments that define a stay are not always the ones planned in advance. Stoeckl now has the opportunity to apply that thinking across a river cruise company—and, perhaps, convince a much larger group of travelers that river cruising was meant for them after all.
