Musica Marks MSC Cruises’ Full Return to Service

Musica Marks MSC Cruises’ Full Return to Service

A Chocolate Tribute to 'Return to FULL Service' on the MSC Virtuosa last week, Photo Credit SpaceJunkie2.

The MSC Musica is resuming service today in Italy, marking the return to revenue operations of the entire MSC Cruises fleet.

One of the first cruise lines to welcome guests back during the pandemic, MSC has been sailing since August 2020.

After months of limited operations in Europe, the brand has been gradually adding destinations and ships back into its active lineup for the past year.

With the Musica kicking off its summer program in the Eastern Mediterranean, all of the fleet’s 19 cruise vessels are now in service again.

Sailing from Monfalcone every Sunday, the 2006-built vessel will offer week-long cruises to the Greek Islands and Italy through November.

Passengers will also be able to board the ship in Bari before sailing to Santorini, Katakolon and Heraklion.

After completing its European deployment, the vessel is set to cross the Atlantic, ahead of a winter program in South America.

Starting in December, the vessel will serve the Argentinean market, with cruises to Brazil and Uruguay departing from the Port of Buenos Aires.

The MSC Musica originally entered service in 2006, introducing a series of four ships known as the Musica Class.

Built by the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard in St. Nazaire, France, the 92,400-ton cruise ship can carry 2,550 passengers in double occupancy and features more than 236,800 square feet of common areas.

Among them are five different dining venues, including two main dining rooms and a Japanese speciality restaurant.

The vessel is also equipped with two outdoor pool decks, a large spa, a two-deck theatre, a mini-golf course, a nightclub, a casino, a cigar room and several lounges and bars.

As the second ship to resume service for MSC Cruises this month, the MSC Musica follows the MSC Orchestra.

After a winter season in South Africa, the vessel returned to Europe on June 4, kicking off a summer program in the Western Mediterranean.

NCL to consult trade on TV advertising ahead of ex-UK return

NCL to consult trade on TV advertising ahead of ex-UK return

Norwegian Cruise Line plans to consult with the trade before making a decision on whether it introduces TV advertising in the UK.

Speaking as the line revealed plans to have a ship sailing from the UK for the first time in seven years, Harry Sommer, executive vice president of international business development, said the line would discuss marketing with key agent partners before making a decision.

“I’ve been asked to speak to our trade partners about doing TV ads in the UK, Germany and Spain – our three top European markets.

"I can’t rule it in or out but because so much of our marketing in Europe is with our travel agency partners it is a decision we’d like to make jointly with them.”

The line will base Norwegian Jade in Southampton in 2017 and will offer a series of 11 Western Europe and three Norwegian Fjords sailings between May 12 and June 20 and August 7 and October 16, 2017.

Sommer said the decision to return to Southampton was partly due to “market demand”, but also that it was “reflective of the growth of the company”.

The ship will arrive in Europe after a two-and-a-half week dry-dock. Ports of call featured on its itineraries include Hamburg, Amsterdam, Zeebrugge, Le Havre, Alesund, Geiranger, and Bergen.

Asked why the line wasn’t offering Mediterranean sailings out of Southampton, Sommer said they’d found it difficult to put together a “good itinerary” and instead believed the fly-cruise market was better suited to that part of Europe.

Senior vice president international sales and operations, Francis Riley, said basing Norwegian Jade in Southampton, and Hamburg, where the ship will also offer sailings from, would be a way of “testing it” for the future.

“When we started looking at deployments we said as a team we were ready to have a ship back (in the UK), and we’ve been ready for some time,” he said.

The line’s 2017 programme includes a total of five ships sailing in Europe, NCL's biggest-ever European deployment.

Norwegian Getaway, which launched in 2014, will return to Europe to sail eight or nine-night Baltic Capitals cruises to and from Copenhagen.

Norwegian Epic will sail in the Western Mediterranean; Norwegian Spirit will offer 10 and 11-night voyages between Barcelona and Venice and Norwegian Star will sail between Venice and the Greek Isles.

Norwegian’s managing director for EMEA, Christian Boell, said: “Not only are we offering the possibility to embark in Southampton but we are also bringing one of our newest and most innovative ships back to Europe.

“We’re convinced that this will encourage continued growth in the UK market, where we have just seen record breaking guest numbers in 2015.”

Northern Europe general manager, Nick Wilkinson, added: “I’m sure these exciting Southampton sailings will be music to our travel partners’ ears.”

“We are back, we’re in Southampton and we are in it to win,” Wilkinson added.

Disney Cruise Line seeks further growth

Disney Cruise Line seeks further growth

Disney Cruise Line will continue to look for growth opportunities, says company president, Karl Holz. By David Mott

The 17-year-old cruise line’s four-ship fleet came in two tranches – Disney Magic and Disney Wonder in the late 1990s, as the initial ships, augmented more than a decade later by the larger Disney Dream in 2011 and Disney Fantasy a year later. Karl Holz says the launch of the two larger ships “transformed our cruise business in many ways. Simply put, we further expanded the blueprint for family cruising.” Both the newer ships have a passenger count of 4,000 against 2,700 for each of the first two vessels. The latest ships, at 130,000gt, are classed as large resort ships because of the self-containment of their facilities.

“We have noticed continuing popularity among our passengers since Disney emerged in the cruise industry in 1998,” says Holz. “With this expansion we have more opportunity to surprise and delight with an ever-increasing list of ports of call around the world.” These include a return to New York in autumn 2016, where Disney Magic will operate a series of cruises and a first-ever British Isles cruise with calls in England, Scotland and Ireland as well as in France.

For a family entertainer like Disney, where the focus is every bit as much on the children as it is on the adults, safety and the environment have a particular resonance and the cruise line is no exception. “We focus our environmental efforts on utilising new technology, increasing fuel efficiency, minimising waste and promoting conservation. We comply with and sometimes exceed all international environmental regulations,” says Holz.

To boost fuel efficiency, Disney claims it is the first cruise line to use an innovative hull coating on its ships which is both 100% non-toxic as well as reducing surface resistance in open water. “In addition, all Disney ships have dedicated environmental officers who are responsible for compliance and are ranked among the most senior leaders onboard.”

Much has been said over the years about the position of people without children on a Disney vessel and this is a subject Holz tackles. “What I can tell you is that there is that there is something for everyone on Disney ships, which all include areas created exclusively for adults. They also have the options of spas, nightclubs and lounges, as well as adult-exclusive dining and pools.” In addition, there is an adult beach at Serenity Bay at Disney’s private island in Florida, Castaway Cay.



Asked how Disney has been able to transpose its stories to shipboard life, Holz says this has been achieved by the extensive use of new technology. “Our team of ‘imagineers’ is always working to bring to life Disney stories for our passengers. 

We have a portfolio of characters and intellectual property and are always looking to anticipate industry trends and plan strategically to deliver entertainment on our ships. As a member of the cruise industry we are always looking to identify trends alongside our competitors and to innovate.” Indeed, Disney’s use of technology has enabled it to become one of a growing number of lines which give passengers in interior cabins a real-time view of the ocean thanks to high-definition cameras positioned outside the ship.

With ships relying so heavily on shipboard attractions, a constant programme of technical updating is obviously important. Holz says: “Reinvesting in our ships, also to meet increased business, is part of the Disney heritage and over the years we have made many changes to upgrade our vessels. In 2013 the Disney Magic spent six weeks in drydock in an operation which made a wonderful ship even better.” The work involved the ‘reimagination’ of the whole upper deck. This autumn Disney Dream will dock in Freeport, Bahamas, when spaces throughout the vessel will be transformed. This work will include the addition of two interactive youth areas, one with a Star Wars theme and another slanted towards Disney Infinity.

In keeping with the international nature of its business, Disney Cruise Line, headquartered in both London and Florida, positions its ships in North America and Europe. In May this year, Disney Magic started sailing the Baltic and the Norwegian fjords out of Copenhagen. That done, she switched to Dover in the UK for two Baltic sailings and a repositioning voyage to Barcelona for two Mediterranean cruises before returning to Miami in the autumn.

Disney Wonder sailed Alaska out of Vancouver this summer before going to Hawaii for two cruises, followed by a return to San Diego for trips to Mexico. Throughout this year, Disney Dream and Disney Fantasy will operate out of Port Canaveral to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Early in 2016 Disney Magic will carry out her maiden British Isles cruise as well as calling at ports in northern Europe, the Greek islands and the Mediterranean. Disney Wonder will reposition from Galveston to San Juan for a southern Caribbean itinerary including, for the first time, the French island of Martinique.

In common with a number of companies operating ocean cruises, Disney has just gone into the river cruising business. But in Disney’s case this is quite separate from the ocean cruise line and river itineraries are operated by Adventures of Disney in conjunction with AmaWaterways. From next year, sailings along the Danube will be operated using AmaViola. There was an initial programme of five sailings and another two have just been added. Passengers will be able to visit eight destinations in four countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.

So growth is certainly on the cards for the operator, but (for now) this does not imply any new additions to the fleet, says Holz. “At this time we do not have any further details to share on building new ships,” he concludes.

MSC Cruises changes course for Divina

By Tom Stieghorst

MSC Divina Cruising the Caribbean Video

MSC Cruises said the MSC Divina, a ship that was scheduled to sail year-round from Miami, will be moved to the Mediterranean for summer 2015 before returning for the winter of 2015-16 in the Caribbean.

The ship began sailing from Miami in November and was the centre piece of an MSC marketing campaign in North America. It will continue on current Caribbean itineraries for the rest of 2014 and the first four months of 2015.

In a statement, MSC Cruises USA President Rick Sasso said “customer surveys are showing an increased desire for North Americans to sail onboard MSC Divina in the Mediterranean."

Industry-wide, Caribbean pricing has suffered from a glut of capacity this year, while demand for European cruises has been surprisingly strong, especially from North America. The weak economies in several European countries and high airfares led some cruise lines to reduce capacity in Europe this year.

MSC said the changes to Divina designed to bring it more in line with American tastes will remain in place for its summer in Europe. Upon returning in the fall of 2015 to the U.S., Divina will get some “surprise enhancements” for the North American market.

In a conference call with analysts earlier Tuesday, Norwegian Cruise Line CEO Kevin Sheehan mentioned the Divina move, saying its arrival in Miami was a significant addition to capacity in the Caribbean that would be removed next summer. 
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Royal Caribbean makes ship change for summer 2015

By Tom Stieghorst

Royal Caribbean will send the Explorer of the Seas to Europe in the summer of 2015 instead of the Adventure of the Seas as previously announced.

Adventure of the Seas will continue to sail from San Juan while Explorer will homeport at Southampton, England, and offer three- to 16-day roundtrip cruises from late April through September 2015.

Prior to starting European service, Explorer will have a month-long drydock to be revitalized and receive features such as virtual balconies.

Last week, an Adventure of the Seas cruise was delayed in San Juan for three days after propulsion issues led Royal Caribben to replace the ship’s propellers, which took longer than expected.

The delayed cruise was the final one before a scheduled drydock for maintenance.

Allure's full European season a response to strong UK demand

The world's largest cruise ship will spend a full season in Europe for the first time in 2015, with strong UK demand to thank.

Following a year in which many cruise companies reduced their European activities, the news that Royal Caribbean will sail Allure of the Seas from in Florida - where it sails alongside its sister ship Oasis of the Seas on primarily Caribbean focused voyages - to Europe is welcome indeed.

Having carried more than two million passengers on Caribbean cruises since its introduction in 2010, the vessel will return for the first time to the continent where it was constructed and will sail from the Spanish port of Barcelona between May and October 2015.

This will follow on the rudder of Oasis of the Seas' mini-Mediterranean season, which is scheduled for autumn of this year.

Once it has arrived in Barcelona, Allure of the Seas will offer UK and European passengers a chance to enjoy seven-night cruises calling at Palma de Mallorca, Marseilles, La Spezia (for Florence and Pisa), Civitavecchia (for Rome) and Naples.

According to Dominic Paul, head of Royal Caribbean International sales outside of North America, bringing Allure of the Seas to Europe is a "bold move", but the cruise line is confident of success.

Speaking to Seatrade Insider, he explained that this confidence comes not only from the merit of its Oasis-class ships, but also in the strength of the UK cruise market and prospects for growth here.

Next year is looking exciting indeed, with Royal Caribbean also planning to home port its new vessel Anthem of the Seas in Southampton once construction has been completed.

Stuart Leven, the Royal Caribbean's managing director for UK and Ireland, added: "The company is showing a big commitment to the UK market in 2015.

He added: "I believe the combination of an Oasis-class ship with all its on-board options and the great cruise destination of the Mediterranean will be a very compelling argument for both those who haven't cruised before and also cruisers who have never experienced Oasis."

A reset for Carnival on Europe

By Tom Stieghorst

The Carnival Sunshine is hosting a media group on its current Mediterranean voyage, and the top concern of the European reporters onboard is Carnival Cruise Lines’ decision to go without a ship in Europe in 2014.

The Carnival Legend, which had been scheduled to sail in Europe next year, is being deployed to Australia, after a winter season in Tampa.  It seems to reverse a promising expansion of Carnival’s sales deployment into the U.K.

At a news conference, Carnival President Gerry Cahill said it ain’t necessarily so. 

“We’re not stopping marketing to the U.K. and Europe,” Cahill noted, saying it would continue to sell cruises to the Caribbean, New York and Barbados to Europeans. 

But Americans made up most of the passengers on a majority of the line's European itineraries.

“Carnival caters best to middle America,” Cahill continued. “The cost of an air ticket to Europe became very, very high, and it was causing a lot of our guests not to be able to afford to come.

“At the end of the day, when the air fare costs more than the price of the cruise, that’s a problem,” he said.

The reset on Europe comes as Carnival is withdrawing from several regional ports on the U.S. East Coast, such as Baltimore and Norfolk, Va. Tighter pollution rules mean higher costs for clean fuels at those ports, and Carnival has an aversion to higher costs. When low prices are such an important part of your strategy, anything that raises them means trouble.
So Carnival is increasingly returning to tried and true markets where it has had traditional success: sailing to the Bahamas and the Caribbean, primarily from ports in Florida.

It recently bolstered its Caribbean capacity from Port Canaveral, where the Sunshine will sail for much of 2014, and from New Orleans, where it will have two ships year-round. Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville will also be home to Carnival ships next year.

For many passengers, flying to Florida isn't as cheap as driving to the port, but it is a lot less expensive than flying to Europe. Travel agents can sell a fly-cruise to Florida because the airfare isn't that scary. But it does mean getting people excited about an area that many cruise passengers have seen before.

The traditional itineraries may not be the most exciting. But with costs rising, they're the ones that Carnival can sell at a price point that middle America can afford.  Europe on Carnival will have to wait for another year.

Europe’s woes could lure more Americans to cruise there

By Tom Stieghorst

As the European financial crisis drags on and various countries’ austerity measures push unemployment skyward, cruise lines could once again find their Europe-based ships filled with North Americans this summer.

With many ships now departed on transatlantic repositioning trips, the cruise lines say that demand within Europe has been softer than anticipated, particularly in southern European countries.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL) recently announced it will cut capacity in Europe again in 2014, reducing it to 25% of its total berths, compared with 31% as recently as 2011.
To a greater degree than in the past, passengers from the U.S. and Canada will be filling those ships, because their economies are performing relatively better than those in most of Europe.

“We will have more Americans cruising with us on itineraries away from North America in 2013 than we had expected,” Royal Caribbean International CEO Adam Goldstein said in a recent conference call.

On the other hand, an enticing whiff of demand in February from European travelers complicates the outlook. It might yet turn out that Europeans will cruise this year, despite unemployment rates that in some countries have risen to more than 25%.

But Europeans tend to wait until they’re close to sailing to book. So cruise executives are left to project, without a lot of certainty, how lines such as Costa, P&O and Pullmantur will do.
“Because of the closer-in booking pattern in Europe, that [makes] forecasting European yields much more difficult,” Carnival Corp. Chairman Micky Arison said in a mid-March conference call.

For travel agents selling European cruises to U.S. travelers, this year has been a modest improvement, at best, over 2012.

“My Europe sales are pretty consistent with last year,” said CruiseOne agent Becky Piper of Strongsville, Ohio, near Cleveland. “I can’t say they’re tremendous, but they’re OK.”

Kevin la Van, manager of Village Cruise & Travel on the southwest side of Chicago, said he’s selling one or two European cruises a month.

“The prices aren’t bad,” la Van said. “That certainly helps. But the airfares are higher. It’s kind of a wash.”

For many agents, summer is the key season, and most of those cruises have been booked.

“It’s difficult to move Europe last minute,” said Mark Fletcher, executive vice president of Mann Travels in Charlotte, N.C. He said escorted tours and river cruises are doing better than deep-water cruises.

Some agents said the European cruises they sell now tend to be for 2014.

Gayle Fortin, director of sales at Legendary Journeys in Sarasota, Fla., said a “No Air Europe” trip combining two transatlantic voyages on Oasis of the Seas next year, with a 15-day land tour sandwiched in between, is very popular.
She said her core business is seniors: “If their heart’s desire is to go to Italy, they’re going to go. They don’t have five years to wait.”

Meanwhile, the economies in some European countries continue to worsen. In Spain, which accounts for 9% of European cruise passengers, unemployment recently hit 27%.

Both RCCL and Carnival Corp. have written down their investments in Spanish cruise lines, based on a bleak forecast for future revenue growth. Those lines are looking outside Spain for passengers. In one example, Pullmantur will use the Monarch of the Seas, recently transferred from Royal Caribbean International, to offer southern Caribbean cruises to Latin Americans.

But the picture is far from uniform. Demand in Germany and much of northern Europe remains healthy.

Beyond Spain, Royal has indicated that the U.K., Europe’s top cruise market, is weaker than expected. Carnival officials said in March that economic uncertainty in Italy was hurting confidence in that country, Europe’s third-largest cruise market.

“With the situation with the [Italian] government basically in a stalemate, that’s not helping either,” Arison said.

However, in late February, Carnival reported a “significant uptick” in European brands’ bookings, and Royal officials said they saw “meaningful demand” from European source markets.

But Carnival also said that was partly in response to pricing actions taken in Germany and the U.K. to maintain full occupancy. Overall, prices and occupancies remain lower year over year for European cruises, Carnival said.

RCCL Vice Chairman Brian Rice said that Royal’s strategy is to divert capacity from Europe to other markets such as the Caribbean and Asia so that prices hold up even if demand is weak.

“We are happy that we took 10% of our capacity out of Europe this year,” Rice said. “We are dealing with an easy comparable [and] we think we are in a good place in terms of our capacity relative to what the market condition is right now.”

From that perspective, Royal’s forecast for European business is a little stronger than what the economy there would predict, he said.

“We view Europe as slightly better than we did three months ago,” Rice said. “But we’re not ready to declare victory there and say that that is the new treasure chest of the industry.”

Despite the current difficulties, there are good reasons for the cruise industry to stick with a European deployment strategy, according to Robin Farley, a leisure analyst for UBS Securities.

In a recent report, she wrote that although European passenger growth was only 1% last year, it has averaged 10% over the past decade, more than double the rate for North America.

European cruises tend to be more profitable than those in North America, and only 1% of Europeans cruised last year, compared with 3.7% of North Americans, a sign of higher potential growth.

Still, Farley noted that the big winner in Europe this year might be Norwegian Cruise Line, because just 15% of its passenger base comes from outside North America.

“We believe Europe, longer term, is an important market for the cruise industry, given low penetration rates,” Farley said. “But 2013 is a good year to have limited exposure to European passenger sourcing.”

Carnival Cruise Lines pulls out of Europe

By Lee Hayhurst 

Carnival Cruise Lines is to send a letter to the UK trade today telling them it will have no ships in Europe next year.

The iconic US cruise line which had two ships in Europe this year - one sailing from Dover, the other from Barcelona and Venice - said it could not risk having ships in Europe.

It said it did not think Americans, who make up the vast majority of its passengers, would pay increased airfares to cross the Atlantic.

Itineraries for 2014 have yet to be announced, but UK director Adolfo Perez said agents may be expecting Carnival to have European sailings next year.

He stressed the deployment did not mean any scaling back of the UK office and said he was very hopeful that Carnival would bring a ship back in Europe for the 2015 season.

"The important thing is that our sales team is staying exactly the same size. In fact, we're even recruiting someone right now to replace one of the team that has just left to move overseas.

"The trade has really supported us and sales have grown significantly from this market and so we will remain as committed as ever with the same great commissions and marketing support.

"We are really hopeful of getting a ship back in Europe in 2015 and you can't just pull out for a year and then expect to just come back again when we need the trade, so it will be business as usual with us really engaged with the trade.

"Unfortunately, we just don't think the airfares for Americans will be affordable."

Perez said the decision to move ships out of Europe was in no way related to recent incidents on Carnival ships.

The letter to agents said: “Given the current market conditions, increasing air fares, and the fact that most of our guests are from the US, we have decided to not deploy a Carnival ship to Europe in 2014.

“This was a difficult decision for us, as we realise our guests truly love sailing with Carnival in Europe, largely because we provide great holidays at great value for money. We are hopeful we will return in the future.”

“Carnival continues to be committed to the UK and Irish markets. Whilst we have relied on you all for our European deployment in 2013, you continue to bring guests to Carnival in the Caribbean… and they love it.

“In fact, the majority of our UK customers choose a cruising holiday that departs from North America. After all, we are the cruise industry leader in year-round Caribbean cruise holidays including departures from all of the major Florida ports and we are the only cruise line to offer year-round departures from Barbados, a true British favourite.”

Carnival Cruise Line ran its first television marketing campaign in the UK this year, it’s ‘Switched On’ advert winning plaudits for promoting cruise to a younger non-traditional market in a fun and engaging way.

Following last year’s decision to split the UK-based team overseeing the line from fellow Carnival Corporation operator Holland America Line, it has had a dedicated sales and marketing team under Perez based in London.

The task to further establish the brand in the UK has been a challenge due to the general economic environment and stiff competition from other brands with UK-based ships also looking to stretch cruising’s appeal to a non-traditional clientele, according to industry insiders.

Much of the success Carnival has seen in recent years has been through agents and operators packaging up its cruises as part of holidays Brits take to ever-popular Florida.