This Blog is for New to Cruise and the well Traveled , on this site we will publish information about Cruise and Holiday information, with some insider stories in the travel press.
The Queen confirmed as godmother of new P&O Cruises ship
P&O Cruises has confirmed that The Queen will officially name the line’s new ship Britannia on Tuesday, March 10.
The announcement confirms speculation that the Queen would be performing the honours in Southampton. She will be accompanied at the naming by the Duke of Edinburgh.
Carnival UK chairman David Dingle said: “We are honoured and proud that Her Majesty will name Britannia almost 20 years after she named the P&O Cruises ship Oriana.
“Britannia, a ship for the nation, will be the embodiment of contemporary Britain, and with her Union Jack livery she will fly the flag for Britain across the Globe.”
The biggest ship designed exclusively for Britain, Britannia is P&O Cruises’ latest vessel.
The ship will include a focus on cuisine, with 'Food Heroes' James Martin, Marco Pierre White, Atul Kochhar, Eric Lanlard, wine expert Olly Smith and cheese expert Charlie Turnbull all contributing to restaurants onboard.
P&O Cruises takes delivery of 'step change' Britannia
By Phil Davies
P&O Cruises new vessel Britannia is a "mega step change" for the company, according to chairman David Dingle.
Speaking as the ship was presented to the company by the Italian Fincantieri shipyard near Trieste, Dingle said the ship would propel the line forward to meet the needs of new and returning customers alike.
Before vowing that "Britannia will once again rule the waves", Dingle said: "This not just a ship for Britain, it's a ship for a new Britain. A more vibrant, more exciting Britain."
Dingle congratulated Fincantieri for their hard work and said the partnership between the shipyard and Carnival had helped to shape the cruise industry.
"Cruising has become a vibrant expanding part of the mainstream holiday business and our two businesses, Fincanteiri and Carnival, as market leaders in our different industry sectors, have played a role in this.
"Taking delivery of a ship is just the beginning for now we must attract passengers to Britannia not only this year but for the next 30 years and we will, because we know it's contemporary, groundbreaking ships which attract others into cruising."
He said he believed the new ship would help push the number of UK cruisers to the two million mark, as well as showing that the "UK was an established part of Carnival's continuing growth."
Britannia is the fifth P&O Cruises ship to be built by Fincanteiri, and the largest ship built for the brand.
Queen Victoria Cruise Ship To Get Multi-Million Upgrade
Cunard Line is continuing its fleet upgrade with a multi-million refurbishment scheduled for January 2015.
The Queen Victoria will have a dry-dock at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. The shipyard is also the same place where sister ship Queen Elizabeth recently had its upgrade.
Queen Victoria’s multi-million dollar refit will ensure this much-loved ship remains in tip-top condition for her World Cruise in 2015 and beyond, said David Dingle, CEO for Cunard Line.
The refurbishment will include 9 brand new single staterooms which will offer an even wider range for cruisers sailing single. More shade will be offered by new sun awnings near the ships open deck pool. Another large part of the refit will be new environmentally friendly filters for the ships propulsion systems.
When a cruise ship gets a major upgrade it usually includes all the hotel spaces which the Queen Victoria will receive. New carpets and flat TV’s will be installed to freshen up the vessel. Also hotel departments including the gift shops will get a new fine jewellery and watches sections along with a new layout.
Queen Victoria’s dry-dock was originally scheduled for December 2015 but due to a propulsion unit bearing problem the dry-dock has had to be brought forward to January 2015. The propulsion issue has caused Cunard to cancel two cruises in January, a 12-day cruise to the Canaries departing January 3rd and a five-day cruise to Amsterdam departing January 15th. Passengers booked on those cruises have been informed and the cruise line is offering a $175 onboard credit. Passengers can choose another cruise or get a full refund of their booking.
While we are sorry to be cancelling the two cruises, we are looking forward to welcoming all those affected back aboard a Cunard ship in the near future, perhaps on Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth, both of which will be sailing in 2015 fresh from their make overs, Dingle said.
The Queen Victoria will be all set for its world cruise starting on January 20th 2015. The ship will offer guests all the latest onboard features which will be added during the upcoming dry-dock in Hamburg.
: £2.4bn poured into Britain's coffers last year with more than 1 million passengers getting on boardIndustry's contribution to country's economy highlighted at Barcelona convention
Ship shape: the port at Southampton welcomes a cruise liner
The cruise industry contributed £2.4billion to Britain’s economy last year, with passengers spending an average of £80 a day each during visits to UK ports such as Southampton and Dover
Latest figures compiled by CruiseBritain show that in 2013 there was a 10% year-on-year increase in cruise embarkations, to 1.04 million, and a 20% increase in day visits, to 866,000. The spend includes crew expenditure, cruise line purchases, ship repair, and employee salaries.
“Cruise tourism is a valuable source of income to ports and destinations across Britain and is increasingly being factored into local and regional tourism,” said Daren Taylor, chair of CruiseBritain, speaking at the Seatrade Med convention in Barcelona.
In the Mediterranean, while other tourism sectors have seen no increase in performance, cruising has grown in volume by 43% since the global recession struck in 2008.
Across the region, there were 27 million passenger movements: 19 million in the Western Med, five million in the Adriatic, and – reduced by concerns over violence in the Middle East – three million in the Eastern Med.
Referring to the fact that most cruise calls to ports in Ukraine have been cancelled this summer, David Dingle, chairman of Carnival UK, said political conflict in the Black Sea area dates back centuries. “They are a fact if life we just live with,” he said.
A proposal to provide an alternative to dredging a new channel for cruise ships visiting Venice was submitted to the Italian government this week.
Lagoon show: a cruise ship sails past St Mark's Square in Venice
A £101million floating jetty, capable of handling up to five ships at a time, would be set up in the sea near Bocca di Lido, and passengers would be transported into the city’s cruise terminal by a large, environmentally-friendly catamaran.
Carnival’s David Dingle still believes the deep channel proposal to be the preferred option, and told Seatrade Med: “What we want is certainty, but we want to do the right thing by all the stakeholders in this debate.”
David Dingle has been appointed chairman of Carnival UK, with current executive vice-president of operations David Noyes (pictured) taking over as chief executive.
Noyes will have operating responsibility for P&O Cruises and Cunard from October 1, and both he and Dingle will report to Carnival Corporation president and chief executive Arnold Donald.
Donald said: “This moves allows us to strengthen further our overall leadership in the critically important UK marketplace, while also promoting from within to leverage the skills, experience and capabilities of our executive team.”
Dingle, who became chief executive in 2007, joined P&O Cruises in London in 1978 where, after holding a series of commercial positions, he became managing director in 2000. At the time of the merger of P&O Princess Cruises plc and the Carnival Corporation in April 2003, he became managing director of Carnival UK.
Noyes joined Carnival UK in 2011, in his current position. Prior to joining Carnival, he worked in the UK travel industry for 25 years, mainly with British Airways, where he was responsible for BA’s worldwide customer services operation, and latterly with Gray Dawes Travel as chief executive.
Elaine Holt will join Carnival UK on October 1 as David Noyes’ replacement as executive vice president operations following a career in the rail, road and airline industries. She has led a series of transformational programmes as executive chairman of East Coast Mainline and before that as managing director of First Capital Connect. Most recently she has acted as a non executive director of the Highways Agency.
Dingle said: “David Noyes is exceptionally placed to lead P&O Cruises and Cunard into the future and grow the business for the next generation. Elaine brings with her a strong blend of operational and customer services skills and will be a very valuable addition to our executive team.”
Two Carnival bosses have reaffirmed their commitment to agents and rejected claims that moves to make distribution more efficient were an attempt to cut out the trade completely.
Speaking exclusively to Travel Weekly last week, Carnival Corporation chairman and new chief executive Arnold Donald (pictured) said inefficiencies in the system in the UK and the US had to be addressed.
Changes made to agent terms, automation and commission in both countries have angered some agents and Carnival has already initiated a charm offensive on both sides of the Atlantic.
In the UK, potential earning levels have crept back up and an Agent Matters initiative has been started.
Arison said: “Our goal was never to cut agents out or to not work with them, but to make this system more efficient so we can all make more money.
“As an operator, if you get a booking on your website, it’s efficient, but that’s a very small piece of the business. If a customer goes to an agent who has an efficient system, that’s as efficient as them calling our call centre. The worst situation is when an agent calls us because then you have two ‘call centres’ talking to each other.
“We were trying to get to a situation where the customer calls our call centre or an agent. In the UK it was also an attempt to control our pricing.”
Donald said the agent community was one of the key stakeholders he has engaged with since taking the role from Arison on July 3. "Travel agents have always been valued," he said.
"You are always trying to tweak what you are doing to motivate and incentivise the behaviour you want so you can effectively manage costs so the money you are spending has an impact.
"There were some measures taken that aggravated [agents] and did not have the desired results but there was never a feeling that travel agents did not count or were not important."
Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle said the commission changes in the UK were driven by travel agents themselves. "There were a number of long-standing partners who kept saying to us can't you do something to stop us cutting each other's throats by this competitive rebating.
"It led to this massively inappropriate behaviour of customers shopping around and agents finding it impossible to close the sale. Some agents were cutting away so much they had nothing to sustain themselves and we lost control of pricing as a result."
