Cruise lines turn focus on China
North American companies battle for edge in Asian waters
Cruise lines based in North America, such as Royal Caribbean International and Carnival Corporation, are moving quickly to solidify holds on China. It’s possible one other, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, might also be following suit.
It wasn’t that long ago — in fact, up to last year — that North American-based lines would never have considered bypassing their home continent when a new ship was launched. Although they did name some ships in Europe (Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, christened the Royal Princess in Southampton, England) and their ships did sail European waters for the summer, they traditionally returned to North America and the Caribbean for winter.
Now, that’s not always going to be the case.
Royal Caribbean declared its newest high-tech ship Quantum of the Seas was here to stay at a press conference last year in New York. Shortly thereafter, the cruise line changed its mind. The ship is still in New York but soon it will be off to its new and permanent home, Shanghai. There, Quantum of the Seas will sail quick turnarounds, mainly fournight cruises that are expected to appeal to the Chinese.
While those cruises are short, they’re not cheap. On July 26, one of them has a starting price of over $1,000 US. More affluent Chinese people who holiday in Europe will be pushed to consider cruising to see that continent.
The third ship in the Quantum Class, Ovation of the Seas, will arrive in the spring of 2016. According to Royal Caribbean, it will then go straight from the Papenburg shipyard in Germany to Tianjin, China, 70 miles southeast of Beijing.
Other lines are moving quickly — at least by cruise standards — to get a foothold in China.
Carnival Corporation announced last week it will build nine ships for its nine brands between 2019 and 2022, and according to CEO Arnold Donald, some of the ships will be purpose-built for China. They are holding back as to which ships will sail under which brands, and which brand (s) will be in China. I’m guessing Costa, Carnival’s Italian line, will be one since it already has three ships there.
Also, Frank Del Rio, the new head of Norwegian, is looking seriously at the market for one of his new ships in the not-yet-released Breakaway Plus Class.
North America is the No. 1 cruise market in the world, but China is growing rapidly and destined to enjoy much larger consideration from the world’s cruise lines.
Incidentally, it’s not only China that cruise lines increasingly have in their sights. Carnival is moving two Holland America ships to its P& O Cruises Australia fleet in November, which will make P& O the largest yearround cruise line Down Under.
Longer cruises in Asia with familiar brands will still be the norm out of ports like Hong Kong and Singapore, and longer cruises will continue to attract the North American market.
Tom Stieghorst of Travel Weekly put the future in perspective when he wrote: “Odds are the cruise industry’s storied past is not going to look like its future. A parochial industry with global reach is morphing into a multinational industry with a local-market emphasis. It’s a big change.”