How will the port of Southampton cope in 2020?

So in the last week, we have had 2 more cruise lines announce which of their ships will be sailing from Southampton in the year 2020 – my initial thoughts were this is great and as fairly local to Southampton gives a lot more choice of ships, but then I thought firstly how is the port going to cope and secondly where are all the passengers going to come from to fill the ships?

So not only will we have the Iona sailing on a weekly basis which will hold 5200 people but we are also going to have the following: Celebrity Apex – Celebrity’s new ship which will hold 2900 passengers

Anthem of the Seas – making a return since 2015 and she holds 4180 passengers
Island Princess – 1974 passengers
Crown Princess – 3080 passengers
Regal Princess – 3600 passengers
All Cunard Queens – 6868 passengers
All P&O ships except Oceana and Iona as listed separately: 14,205

Obviously, some of these ships will not do the whole season sailing out of Southampton but this doesn’t even include if Royal Caribbean will have a second ship (rumour has it the Uk favourite Independence of the Seas will be back). if Celebrity will send another ship to replace the Apex, what ship/s MSC will have from Southampton, and also not forgetting Fred Olsen and NCL have ships from Southampton.

But will the traffic, the port and the staff cope in Southampton with the high level of traffic/people? The footfall for the city centre will be great for Southampton and I used to work in a high street travel agent in Southampton and used to love ship days as we used to lots of crew about in the high street and also in our shop sending moneygrams home to their families.

Have P&O been clever by launching so early to get ahead of the competition and starting to fill their ships before the others? Next month sees Princess, Royal Caribbean for Anthem of the Seas and Celebrity cruises for Celebrity Apex all launch. So if they are your preferred cruise lines then keep an eye out for launch dates and itineraries.