With All These New Ships We May Need More Sea!

The cruise industry is truly booming. At least if the amount of brand new ships that are on order is anything to go by it definitely is! Here’s a round up of what to expect in the next few years from the major players in the cruise world….

P&O are launching their new ship, Iona in 2020 – their biggest yet carrying over 5,000 passengers

Royal Caribbean are launching Spectrum of the Seas next year, followed by a further 4 vessels , as yet unnamed to be launched by 2024. No doubt at least one will take the crown of biggest cruise ship in the world.

Celebrity have their much hyped ship, Edge sailing her maiden voyage in November this year, but they also have 3 further ships launching by 2022 including the Apex in 2020, named only this week

MSC have 2 ships launching in  2019, the Grandiosa & the Virtuosa, with another new ship due to launch every year after that until 2026! That is a lot of people that will be floating around on an MSC ship.

Viking are looking like the fastest growing fleet & have no less than 10 new ocean cruise ships being introduced by 2027, expanding their fleet to 16. Expect to see them raising their profile in the high end market.

Carnival have the Panorama launching in 2019 and a further 3 ships by 2024, although the later 2 are being custom built for the Chinese market, which will be a first for Carnival.

Costa have 2 ships on order, the first the Venezia launching in Spring 2019. Maybe there’s not a lot of money to spare for new ships at Costa HQ?

Saga are introducing the Discovery & the Adventure making an appearance in 2019 & 2020 respectively. Do you think they will try and attract a slightly younger market in order to have no empty cabins?

Princess have the Sky Princess sailing October 2019 & then a further 4 ships by 2025. This will be the first launch since the Majestic Princess in 2017.

Norwegian Cruise Lines are launching the Encore late 2019 then nothing new until 2023 and then one each year until 2026. I wonder why they have a 4 year gap?

Holland America are launching the the Nieuw Statendam in November this year & have one ship without a name due to sail late 2021, but no more on the horizon.

Virgin Voyages this week announced the name of their first ship, Scarlet Lady due to sail early 2020 with the 2 sister ships to follow in 2021 and 2022. This ship is an adult only ship which is already being hyped up as a game-changing ship. Let’s wait & see….

Disney Cruise Line has 3 ships on order all to be afloat by 2023. These ships will take the fleet from 4 to 7. I wonder if this will bring the prices down at all?

In the luxury market Silversea have the Silver Moon and Silver Dawn appearing in 2020 and 2021, Regent &  Seabourn also have new builds arriving in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

So…with over 50 ships, many of which will certainly carry over 4,000 passengers do you think that the cruise lines are going to be able to fill all the cabins up? Clearly the cruise market must be doing well for these companies to have the confidence to commission all these new vessels. No doubt some analyst in a suit in an office somewhere far away has made their prediction of just how much business will be out there. For their sake and for the good of the cruise industry I hope they got it right.

Lots to look forward to on the horizon.

TTFN 🙂