2019/20 to be Princess’ biggest yet

PRINCESS Cruises will embark on its largest ever Australian and New Zealand deployment in 2019/20, with five ships to homeport out of six cities.

The 900+ day deployment will see over 125 departures offered across Sydney, Perth (Fremantle), Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland.

As part of the deployment Princess Cruises will base two of its four newer ships in Sydney, Ruby Princess and Majestic Princess, generating a 25% increase in capacity on the 2018/2019 season.

Princess Cruises svp Asia Pacific commercial and operations Stuart Allison told Cruise Weekly the line had wanted to base a second large ship in Sydney for many years, given the demand for cruising out of the city.

“People want to be cruising from Sydney and it has been hard to do because it’s been hard to get the berthing slots at OPT,” he explained, adding that the berths had to be secured five years ago.

The extra capacity has allowed Princess to introduce fresh offerings, with Allison explaining the line endeavours to do something new in each homeport.

He said the return of the 46-day Indian Ocean and South Africa Odyssey itinerary for the first time since 2016 had generated a lot of interest from travel agents.

Princess has also scheduled three international cruises sailing roundtrip from Adelaide for the season, following success of the first this summer just gone.

In Melbourne guests will be able to embark on a Queensland cruise for the first time and from Brisbane, a Tasmania cruise.

The 2019/20 season will also see all of Princess Cruises’ collection of restaurants by celebrity chefs available on cruises out of Australia for the first time.

Bookings for 2019/20 open 9am on Thu 19 Apr.