September

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30/09/10

Port Everglades to Welcome New Cruise Ships in 2011

Broward County’s Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale will welcome an array of new ships, itineraries and passenger services during the 2010-11 cruise season. Port Everglades will welcome the second of the world’s largest cruise ships, Royal CaribbeanInternational’s Allure of the Seas, the second Oasis-class cruise ship. The new ship will be named at its homeport, Port Everglades, and begin sailing every Sunday year-round on Dec. 5.
In addition, four other newly built cruise ships will debut at Port Everglades this season.Holland America Line’s Nieuw Amsterdam will homeport at Port Everglades this winter beginning Nov. 7. Seabourn Cruise Line will celebrate the U.S. debut of the Seabourn Sojourn on Nov. 15. Cunard Line’s new Queen Elizabeth will call at Port Everglades on Jan. 16. And P&O Cruises will have three cruise ships calling at Port Everglades for the first time, including the line’s new Azura, which is scheduled to arrive on Dec. 20. The other P&O ships coming to Port Everglades for the first time are Aurora, arriving on Oct. 26, and Ventura, arriving Jan. 4.

28/09/10

Korea's Lotte Tour charters Costa Classica

Lotte Tour Co. Ltd, one of the largest tour operators in Korea, to charter Costa Classica from September 16-26, 2010 traveling from Shanghai to South Korea and Japan. This charter is exclusively dedicated to Koren Guests: it will be the first and largest Korean group to take a holiday on a Costa cruise ship. The Costa Classica Korean charter includes 3 cruises with different itineraries available for customers.  The first is a 2 nights cruise from Shanghai to Busan. The second is a 6 nights cruise sailing out of Busan, visiting Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Hososhima, and Kobe. The third is another 2 nights cruise positioning back Busan-Shanghai. There will be in total over 3,000 Korean passengers on board for the whole charter. more...

24/09/10

Norwegian EPIC - goes Virtual

Norwegian Cruise Line has created a virtual inaugural to capture “all the information, the feel and the sense of excitement that folks got when they came to the inaugural cruises of Norwegian Epic,” Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Passenger Services Andy Stuart announced during a live webcast. Hosted by Norwegian Epic cruise director Silas Cook, the virtual inaugural is divided into several mini-videos, Stuart said, which explore the vessel’s Freestyle dining, Freestyle entertainment, innovative accommodations, luxury at sea, solo travel, family fun, and world-class entertainment. “It’s a super tool, and travel partners can use it for themselves to train their colleagues or use it when they’re talking to a consumer, to show them these vignette videos that give them a sense of the ship,” Stuart explained. Watch here....

24/09/10

Cruise ships continue to foul the Baltic Sea

Despite promises to use port facilities to offload waste water, more than half of the cruise ships in the Baltic Sea still dump their toilet water straight into the sea, WWF revealed today. 
To this end, WWF is demanding a ban on waste water dumping in the Baltic ahead of an international meeting next week. 
In May 2009, ECC, an organization representing the major cruise companies operating in Europe, committed to stop dumping their waste water in the Baltic Sea “when certain conditions were met”. 
These conditions included “adequate port reception facilities which operate under a ‘no special fee’ agreement”. Today, at least two major ports around the Baltic Sea, Stockholm and Helsinki, meet these conditions. However, WWF revealed today that most cruise ships do not use these port facilities. more...

23/09/10

Celebrity Cruises Names Fifth Solstice-Class Ship Celebrity Reflection

“Selecting the name of the fifth ship in the class led us to reflect back on the significant impact the Solstice Class has had on the cruise industry,” said Celebrity’s President and CEO Dan Hanrahan. “Our Solstice-Class ships offer the finest in premium cruising, with service provided by the best men and women in the hospitality business, as evidenced by the tremendous response from our guests, travel partners and the press, and a continuously expanding series of prestigious awards. There is no question that Celebrity Reflection will deliver an equally outstanding vacation experience for our guests.” 
Following delivery in November 2012, Celebrity Reflection will join Celebrity Solstice, Celebrity Equinox - Video -, Celebrity Eclipse and Celebrity Silhouette, rounding out the $3.7-billion class.

21/09/10

Utopia Residences Closer to Contract

The residence-ship Utopia is moving toward a firm building contract with Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, according to Captain Ola Harsheim, senior vice president of newbuilding and ship operations for Utopia Residences. The estimated construction cost for the 105,000-ton ship is $1.1 billion and delivery is slated for 2014. While Samsung has not yet built a cruise ship, it is no newcomer to cruise. The Korean builder has had a dedicated cruise team for the past 10 years, working on new designs and prototypes and competing for contracts. “We can build everything on a (cruise) ship, except the hotel accommodations, where we will bring in European subcontractors,” Young Ryeol Joo, vice president of the cruise and ferry team,

20/09/10

Are You Ready To Go Back To Titanic?

Willtiger Corporation and Azamara Club Cruises are proud to announce Voyages! Titanic 2012, a once-in-a-lifetime experience aboard Azamara Journey - Video - commemorating the historic maiden trans-Atlantic voyage of the RMS Titanic. Departing April 9, 2012, from Boston on a 9-night roundtrip itinerary, the voyage will arrive at the location of the final resting place of Titanic on her 100th anniversary and remain for three days, where Azamara Journey will be the exclusive cruise ship to receive live video feeds from a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) deployed from an expeditionary ship alongside. Throughout, guests will have opportunities to immerse themselves in the history and experience of Titanic. For more Information visit here....

13/09/10

Newbuilding rumours from Hamburg

Hamburg
The SMM tradeshow, held last week in Hamburg, is a great place to gather bits and pieces of market rumours. Although unconfirmed, as rumours are before they eventually end up as a press release, they are almost treated as facts by the end of the exhibition week, when you have heard them so many times. But, these are unconfirmed rumours of upcoming cruise ship orders. Hapag Lloyd is to place their 30,000 gross ton newbuilding order in France, which is a very interesting piece of news from the last days of the tradeshow. Already during the first days, everyone "knew" that a letter of intent has been signed, for NCL's next vessels, with Meyer Werft. The previous vessel, Norwegian Epic, was recently delivered from France. Interesting but partly predictable. That leaves one joker about which no definite rumours were expressed, at least loudly – Royal Caribbean International's next series of vessels. One could argue that these are bound for Finland, but RCI keeps the competition going on for these, between STX in Finland and Meyer Werft in Germany. Allure of the Seas, the last vessel at the Turku Yard in Finland is to be delivered on October 28. Maybe around that time some of these rumours turn into orders. Until then we can just speculate.

11/09/10

Cruise West lays off Seattle staff

Seattle,WA
Financially sinking Seattle company Cruise West is laying off 65 employees and has left some passengers desperately seeking refunds after it abruptly ended a world cruise and halted reservations. Many Cruise West employees have lost or will lose their jobs. Twenty-four were laid off Wednesday and another 41 will be laid off starting Friday, said Washington's Employment Security Department, which received the legally required layoff notification from the company. Cruise West terminated a world cruise aboard its flagship 120-passenger Spirit of Oceanus in Newfoundland, Canada, earlier this week. more...

09/09/10

NCL &YouTube - team on new travel-specific channel

Norwegian Cruise Line today announced it is working with YouTube to power the first-ever YouTube Vacationer, a travel-specific channel within the world's largest online video site providing vacation inspiration with ideas and advice from well-traveled experts, such as Lonely Planet, National Geographic and Travel Channel. The YouTube Vacationer, www.youtube.com/vacationer, is also interactive, offering visitors a first of its kind opportunity to create their own "Vacation You" video experience and share it with others. To experience the YouTube Vacationer channel, visit www.youtube.com/vacationer.

08/09/10

NCL: close to two plus one ship order?

Miami/Papenburg
Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) is said to be close to placing an order for two Post-Panamax cruise liners, with an option for a third vessel, with Meyer Werft in Germany, according to reports on Cruisecritic.com and Seatrade Insider. The ships would be smaller than the 153,800 gross ton Norwegian Epic that STX France delivered to NCL this summer. Meyer Werft has built several ships to NCL, which is headquartered in Miami.

02/09/10

Her Majesty the Queen to Name Cunard's Queen Elizabeth

Cunard Line is pleased to announce that Her Majesty The Queen will name the company’s new Queen Elizabeth, the third Cunard ship to bear the name, at a ceremony to take place in Southampton, England on Monday, 11 October 2010. The naming will be a milestone in British maritime history and will be a major event of worldwide interest. “The naming of a Cunard Queen is a very special occasion and this will be an historic event in the true sense of the word,” said Peter Shanks, president of Cunard Line. “The Queen launched Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1967 and named our current flagship, Queen Mary 2, in 2004. We are both honoured and proud that Her Majesty will name our new liner, Queen Elizabeth,” added Shanks. Her Majesty was also present at the age of 12 at the launch of the first Queen Elizabeth on 27 September 1938 when she accompanied her mother, Queen Elizabeth, to Clydebank for the launch.

01/09/10

Allure of the Seas: "Zero remarks"

Miami/Turku
Richard Fain, chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises, commented that the goal for the delivery of the Allure of the Seas - Video - was to have zero remarks, according to a recent post on his blog following a visit to the STX Europe yard in Finland.
Fain said that Oasis left the yard in Turku with 6,000 remarks and that at this point, the Allure of the Seas was so far along that teams from both Royal Caribbean and STX Europe "agreed that we should target leaving the shipyard at the end of October with zero remarks," Fain wrote.
To put this in perspective, OASIS left the shipyard with over 6,000 remarks that took weeks to resolve!