Port Everglades Expansion On Track

Port Everglades is advancing $1.6 billion in infrastructure improvements that are underway and expected to be completed in the next five years, according to a press release.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly impacting this year’s bottom line, but we are fortunate that Port Everglades’ diversified business sectors of cargo, cruise and petroleum can address a dip in one business sector and be balanced out with stability in other revenue-generating business sectors. As a result, Port Everglades has a history of financial success and has budgeted for several sizeable construction projects that are moving forward at a rapid pace with little disruption from the virus,” said Port Everglades’ Glenn Wiltshire, Acting Chief Executive & Port Director.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the preconstruction engineering and design phase of deepening the Port’s navigation channels from 42 feet to 48-50 feet and widening narrower sections of the channel for safe vessel passage.

In February 2020, this project received $29.1 million in funding under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers FY 2020 Work Plan. The funding will be used to build a new facility at U.S. Coast Guard Station Fort Lauderdale so the Intracoastal Waterway can be widened by 250 feet. Currently, this chokepoint in the channel puts operating restriction on large Neo-Panamax cargo ships, which affects their ability to transit past docked cruise ships. The Coast Guard Station reconfiguration is the first phase of the larger dredging project.

Port Everglades is also building a new parking garage to serve Cruise Terminals 2 and 4. The new 1,818-space garage is currently under construction, with a Fall 2020 completion date. It will feature an air-conditioned bridge with moving walkways to deliver guests to Terminal 2, Princess Cruises’ prototype Ocean Medallion terminal. The Northport Garage, where passengers now park, will be dedicated to the Greater Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center.

The Top Cruise Stories of the Decade

During this past decade, the cruise ship orderbook grew from 27 ships on order in 2010 to more than 110 ships entering 2020. Not only is the current orderbook a record, it also contains more different ships than ever before from 9,000 to 100 passengers, from contemporary and mass market ships to ultra-luxury and expedition vessels.

The expedition market has taken off in the last few years. Traditionally dominated by a handful of operators with older ships, new ships are taking over while also growing the market segment and attracting new players, including most of the major cruise companies.

China has been a roller coaster for the industry. When the market “discovered” cruising, too many operators put too many ships in there too fast which resulted in an adjustment period as the market and its sales model were overwhelmed. Having modified its sales model, the market now seems to be coming back, but operators are more cautious.

Better satellite service and more broadband have accelerated internet and phone services aboard the ships so passengers now essentially can enjoy the same connectivity they can at home. In addition, apps and services like Princess’ Ocean Medallion.

Increasingly stricter environmental regulations have been introduced, requiring ships to operate on low-sulfur fuel or use scrubbers to clean the exhaust gases from heavy fuel oil. These restrictions also extend to ports which may also require low sulfur fuels or that ships turn off their engines and connect to shorepower.

New technologies have also been explorer and introduced due not only the environmental regulations but also the cost of fuel, seeking to reduce fuel consumption which in turn also reduces emissions. These technologies include LNG as a new fuel, research into hybrid solutions including fuel cells and batteries, optimized hull and bow shapes, hull coatings, trim optimization, LED lighting, and more.

Women have stepped up the plate and broken the so-called glass ceiling assuming top jobs as presidents and CEOs of cruise brands, as well as senior executives. Carnival Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises and Princess Cruises have women at the helm. Also at sea, women have assumed roles as captains in addition to senior officer positions.

The decade has also seen the dramatic growth of MSC Cruises sailing up to be the third largest cruise company. In addition, newcomer Viking Ocean has established itself in the premium market and is now also reaching into the expedition segment. Also launched has been the new brand of Virgin Cruises, so far with four ships being built.

Drydockings have evolved from being mainly class inspections, repairs and basic refurbishments to becoming major revitalization projects, including stretchings, sometimes transforming older ships into literally new ships, to the tune of as much as $200 million per project.

All was not positive during the decade, however, the grounding of the Costa Concordia with the resulting loss of life in addition to eventual scrapping of the ship, made a strong if temporary dent in the industry’s safety public perception. Incidents of violation of environmental regulations also took place, resulting in hefty fines.

 

Princess Cruises claims Medallion Net offers ‘best WiFi at sea’

Princess Cruises claims Medallion Net offers ‘best WiFi at sea’

Princess Cruises claims it has rolled out the “best WiFi at sea” which will help attract new-to-cruise passengers.

Princess Cruises has fitted nine ships with Medallion Net WiFi so far and plans to complete rolling it out across its fleet by July next year.

The WiFi will power the line’s Ocean Medallion technology, which is fitted on new ship Sky Princess.

Speaking onboard the ship during its shakedown cruise from Trieste to Athens, Prag Shah, the line’s global head, experience and innovation, said: “One of the biggest detractors people have of cruising – like the younger generation – is that they cannot be connected as well as on a land-based holiday.

“Millennials always like to be posting and sharing their experiences with everybody.

“We wanted to make connectivity onboard better and a lot of effort and creativity went in to do that. From a cruising standpoint, being able to promote and sell longer cruises brings another type of cruiser into the equation.”

John Padgett, Carnival Corporation’s chief experience and innovation officer, addressed media and travel agents via the internet to demonstrate the connection strength on the new vessel.

He said: “There are no longer any sacrifices by coming on a cruise vacation. Cruise holidays have been an amazing value for years, but you have tended to sacrifice this feeling of connectivity.

“There are no longer any sacrifices there. We are the only cruise line that offers anything like this. I want you to use as much bandwidth as you like because that makes your experience better.”

Padgett told the audience Medallion Net, which costs $9.99 per day, as the “best WiFi at sea”.

Sky Princess is the first of the line’s vessels which was built with Ocean Medallion. Several guest services, including ordering food and drink anywhere on the ship, locating friends and family, and navigating your way around the vessel are available through the wearable technology.

The line has retrofitted four of its existing ships with Ocean Medallion.

When asked what developments would be made to Ocean Medallion technology going forward, Shah said: “Personalising [Ocean Medallion] is going to be where we are putting a lot more focus [in 2020].”

Carnival Corp. demonstrates Medallion's bandwidth potential

Carnival Corp. staged a live teleconference from the decks of the Regal Princess, demonstrating the new Medallion technology's bandwidth and connectivity.

The ship is the first to implement Medallion, part of which is a faster and more reliable internet connection.

During the demonstration in the Bahamas, Carnival attempted to harness 1.5 gigabytes per second of bandwidth to show that connectivity is a rapidly fading concern on ships. Carnival showed that games and video streaming ran adequately on the Medallion internet.

John Padgett, Carnival's chief experience and innovation officer, presided over the demonstration and said that the largest bandwidth reported to date by a cruise ship had been 580 megabytes per second.

Unlike homes, cell phones or most hospitality venues, cruise ships at sea are out of touch with the usual transmission networks for Internet signals and must rely on satellites. Until recently that service has suffered from slowness, unreliability and expense.

"There's always been a liability associated with cruising and that has been connectivity," Padgett said.

He said he hoped the stress test would prove that cruise ships now have the same technical capacity as land resorts for connectivity.

"Once we dispel the myth that connectivity is a problem, we'll open up the cruise market to new demand," Padgett said.

To gain better connectivity, Carnival has partnered with SES Networks, which has an array of high and mid-earth orbit satellites, which can shorten the time that signals travel back and forth in the atmosphere, improving connectivity.

Steve Collar, CEO of SES Networks, said on the conference call that the quality of Internet service is affected by the distance to the satellite and by the amount of bandwidth devoted to the transmission.

He compared earlier service on cruise ships to a four-lane highway, and said the bandwidth in the demonstration is more like a 50 or 100 lane highway. The precise amount of bandwidth in use during the call will be subject to later verification.

"Now it's about making that bandwidth affordable, and seamless and efficient," Collar said.

Padgett said the super-fast Internet for now is available only on the Regal Princess and he declined to give a timetable for its implementation on other Princess or Carnival Corp. ships. But he said there's been much progress in making the Internet service faster and more reliable.

"All of our ships have connectivity, and we've made a dramatic improvement across the fleet over the past few years," Padgett said.

What the year ahead holds for the industry

What the year ahead holds for the industry

Next Gen. Cruise ship for MSC.

Until recently, expedition cruising was a quiet corner of the ocean cruise business, with occasional new tonnage added to a small fleet of spartan ships sailing to wild and majestic places.

The ships are still small, but some are not so spartan anymore, and the expedition niche in 2018 is trending bigger.

By one estimate, at least 18 new expedition vessels are ready to debut over the next 24 months.

Setting the tone was the transfer in 2017 of the original Silversea Cruises ship, the Silver Cloud, to the line's expedition fleet after conversion to an ice-hardened vessel capable of visiting both polar regions.

In 2018, the parade of new expedition builds begins in June with Le Laperouse, the start of a new class for the luxury expedition brand Ponant, which will add three more of the 180-passenger vessels by mid-2019.

The French brand will be joined this year by Norway's Hurtigruten, which is expecting a new prototype, the 530-passenger Roald Amundsen, in August. Soon after, Scenic Cruises will take delivery of the 228-passenger Scenic Eclipse, another expedition-style vessel.

And by year's end, Quark Expeditions plans to take delivery of a 176-passenger ship, currently under construction in Portugal, capable of polar sailing.

The boom is underway in part because small ships for expedition cruising are easier to finance than the $1 billion behemoths now being ordered by contemporary ocean cruise brands. And there is a greater variety of shipyards able to take on the projects.

Companies like Lindblad Expeditions have gone public and are tapping into public equity to finance expansion.
Expedition cruise lines expect that many consumers who have been introduced to cruise vacations by the larger lines in recent years are now familiar with the concept and will be receptive to trying a different kind of cruising.

New technologies

In addition to a bumper crop of expedition ships, 2018 will also see the advancement of technology on larger ships designed to save time and smooth out the points of friction to make cruising more enjoyable.

The technologies go by disparate names: Royal Caribbean International calls its package Excalibur, MSC Cruises has MSC for Me and Carnival has its Ocean platform, which includes the Ocean Medallion and Ocean Compass app. Luca Pronzati, MSC's chief business innovation officer, said MSC's technology will provide wayfinding onboard the ships, a reservations function and a more convenient way to access and personalize an activities agenda.

"You can schedule your day in an easy way," Pronzati said. "It's really changing the paradigm."

Passengers can access the information through smartphones, on their in-cabin TVs or at screens in public areas of the ship. Pronzati said that the current functionality of MSC for Me, which is available on the MSC Meraviglia and the MSC Seaside, is a foundation and that the line is working on expanded capabilities, such as a digital concierge service.

Carnival's Ocean platform, although it debuted for a limited number of passengers on Princess Cruises' Regal Princess in November, will be rolled out onboard five more ships by the end of 2018.

Carnival expects its phased activation of the Ocean Medallion and Ocean Compass app onboard the Regal Princess to be finished by the first quarter of 2018, with all passengers being able to use it simultaneously thereafter. The two technologies are designed to give each cruise customer a more personalized vacation. It will, for example, provide suggestions for activities, drinks and meals based on stored preferences and proximity to venues on the ship.

Royal Caribbean's package of onboard technologies, Excalibur, is expected to be on 15% of its fleet, starting with its most-recently delivered ships, within the first few months of 2018. It will be on a majority of Royal's 25 ships by the end of the year.

One focus of Excalibur is expedited embarkation, which Royal calls "frictionless arrival." It will allow passengers who input information before arrival come aboard without stopping at a check-in counter. Other applications include using it to order room service, open cabin doors and connect with friends and family onboard.

One of the ships that will benefit from Excalibur is Celebrity's new Celebrity Edge, the first in a class of four ships ordered so far that will be a prototype for the design of Celebrity's fleet.

The innovations already announced for the ship include "infinite verandas" in which balcony space is incorporated into a cabin and the Magic Carpet, a 90-ton platform that hangs off one side of the ship and will move between four decks, including the embarkation deck, where it will serve as a shore excursion platform.

Following a December 2018 christening in Fort Lauderdale by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, the Edge will make its first seven-day Caribbean cruise.

Celebrity plans to spend $400 million over the next six years to make the rest of its fleet look more like the Edge class.

The Cuba connection

Some of the oldest ships in the cruise industry will also be part of its newest trend in 2018: expanded cruises to Cuba. Norwegian Cruise Line has tapped the Norwegian Sun for four-day cruises to Cuba from Port Canaveral next summer. The Sun is joining Norwegian's oldest ship, the Norwegian Sky, which does the itinerary from Miami.

Royal Caribbean is also expanding its capacity to Cuba, putting the 28-year-old Empress of the Seas in Miami for five-, seven- and eight-day trips that for the first time include Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba, while its second-oldest ship, the Majesty of the Seas, will provide four- and five-night Cuba itineraries from Tampa.

Carnival Corp. to proceed cautiously with Ocean Medallion

Arnold Donald, left, with Travel Weekly's Arnie Weissmann at CruiseWorld. Photo Credit: Creative Focus

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Carnival Corp. is taking a slow approach to introducing Ocean Medallion technology, making sure it works right and is delivering the services that customers really want, CEO Arnold Donald said Friday at Travel Weekly's CruiseWorld.

Speaking to travel agents at the conference, Donald said the technology is so transformational that Carnival Corp. doesn't want to create a future shock for past passengers.

The Ocean Medallion is a wearable disc that can be worn as a pendant, wristband or clip. Besides functioning as a stateroom key and streamlining the boarding process, the device is billed as a "personal concierge." When used in tandem with the Ocean Compass app, the Ocean Medallion will enable passengers to make dinner reservations, order drinks to be delivered where they are located, receive excursion invitations based on interests, and play casino games anywhere on the ship.

"We've got to be really intelligent about how we introduce this because it's different," Donald said.

Carnival Corp. did a multimillion-dollar upgrade of the Regal Princess' terminal at Port Everglades to create a new embarkation experience. "When guests walk through that terminal, it doesn't feel like what they're used to, so we want to manage all the unintended reactions," Donald said.The first ship to have the Ocean Medallion, Princess Cruises' Regal Princess, was to offer it on the entire 3,560-passenger ship starting Nov. 13, but the rollout has been scaled back to select guests and groups.

The MedallionNet rapid Internet service, which is in use on the whole ship, is drawing rave reviews, Donald said.

Carnival Corp. is targeting the 2018 first quarter for a wider introduction of the Ocean Medallion. "The guests will decide what they want, how they want it when they want it. That's why we're introducing it slowly to make sure we get it right because it's truly transformational," Donald said.

Carnival is also moving deliberately on developing a new $200 million beach destination in Grand Bahama. Donald said Carnival signed a deal to build the destination just before a change in government in the Bahamas.

"We're working closely with the new government to make sure we've got the right location, the right development concepts and that it will work for the locals," Donald said. "It's not just a matter of building a destination, but building a destination that's woven through the local community. We hope to have that destination completed in the next few years, but it is a process."

Donald was also asked why Carnival sells through warehouse club Costco, which uses gift cards convertible to cash as a rebate when club members buy cruises

"I don't have an easy answer for any of these big-scale folks that go low-cost," Donald responded. "You have to match up your business where it really will compete effectively."

He said agents that provide personal service and client understanding will not suffer from bottom-feeder competition, but he said Carnival will look at the issue. "We would prefer to see strong pricing," he said. "There's no big reason to be discounting today."

Princess Cruises' Ocean Medallion launch on schedule

"It's all about enabling the crew to give the guests what they want, when they want it, how they want it." -- Arnold Donald

SAN DIEGO -- Carnival Corp. is on track to launch its Ocean Medallion on the Regal Princess this November, CEO Arnold Donald said at the ASTA Global Convention this week.

Donald spoke about the medallion and other topics at a general session.

"We're marching full-steam ahead, and the beautiful thing about it is while it is technology for the guests, they won't notice any of that," Donald said after his address during the general session, calling the technology "effortless" and "comprehensive" for cruisers.

The Medallion is a small disc-shaped device that cruisers can choose to wear as a wristband or pendant or carried in a pocket, purse or wallet. Carnival plans to use it to offer personalized experiences, among other functions. The Medallion will function as a room key.

For instance, Donald said, a guest could walk into a bar and the bartender will know his or her name and the last drink they ordered. If, for some reason, they leave the bar before their drink is ready (his example was to see a whale appearing off the side of the ship during an Alaska cruise), the crew will bring their drink to them.

"It's all about enabling the crew to give the guests what they want, when they want it, how they want it," Donald said. "It's a personalized, customized service for the guest, and that's what the technology enables."

Currently, employees are undergoing "very extensive" training to use the technology effectively. Donald said key staff members are working with Medallion's development team, and "their jobs are going to completely be redefined" when they start using the technology.

To outfit a ship so it's Medallion-ready, the entire vessel has to get sensors put in place. The Medallion itself works like a beacon, Donald said, and the sensors connect the Medallion with an intelligence system. Ships have to be outfitted with portals throughout the vessel, both inside and outside of cabins, where guests can interact with the Medallion if they wish (they can also set preferences via a smartphone).

From a physical standpoint, sensors need to be placed and wiring needs to be installed in dry dock, the CEO said.

The first Medallion sailing will be aboard Regal Princess this November, and other Princess ships are scheduled to follow. A rollout to Princess' entire fleet could take a few years.

Donald said other brands could opt to install the technology once they "decide to push the go button."

Princess Cruises reveals next three ships to get Ocean Medallion

Princess Cruises reveals next three ships to get Ocean Medallion

The next three Princess Cruises ships to feature wearable Ocean Medallion technology for passengers have been revealed.

Golden Princess (November 2018), Crown Princess (November 2018) and Ruby Princess (January 2019) join four other Princess ships scheduled to use the system.

Regal Princess will be the first from November 13, followed by Royal Princess on January 19, 2018, Caribbean Princess on March 18, 2018 and Island Princess on May 16, 2018.

Golden Princess returns to Melbourne from October 2018 to April 2019 with departures to South Pacific, Tasmania, South Australia and New Zealand.

Crown Princess will feature Ocean Medallion for the autumn 2018 Caribbean season. With this news, all Princess Cruises Caribbean cruisers will experience Ocean Medallion.

Ruby Princess will be sailing from Los Angeles for a season of West Coast cruising in early 2019.

Jan Swartz, group president of Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia, said: “With the addition of Golden Princess to the fleet of Medallion Class ships, we will make available a more personalised holiday to guests sailing in and around Australia.

“And, as we continue to enhance our ships with the Ocean Medallion, we do so to further our commitment in providing our guests the most memorable and relaxing holiday.”

Ocean Medallion goes beyond the growing number of wearables used by theme parks and other holiday companies by leaving behind the required action of ‘tap’ and “ushering in a new paradigm for guest interactions,” Carnival Corporation claims.

Comparing Carnival’s Ocean Medallion Versus MSC for Me

 MSC for Me wearable bracelet. (Photo courtesy of MSC Cruises)

Princess Cruises recently announced a fourth ship in its fleet would receive Carnival Corporation’s latest Ocean Medallion technology. Rival MSC Cruises has newly introduced its own MSC for Me guest tech as well.

While the two are very similar, there are also differences to discuss.

Quick Background

The whole high-tech trend towards wearable and app-based devices really started when Royal Caribbean International implemented its SMART Check-In and WOWbands on its newest ships.

The idea is simply to help expedite initial embarkation with as much data pre-entered before arriving pier-side and to have a rubber bracelet that can more conveniently replace a key card. This then provides RFID access to opening cabins and making purchases in conjunction with the Royal iQ app.

Carnival's Ocean Medallion

Announced at CES 2017, Carnival’s Ocean Medallion takes the concept much further. Curiously, it won’t first be rolled out on its Carnival Cruise Line brand but rather its Princess Cruises one. Regal Princess will introduce it in November 2017, followed by Royal Princess in January 2018, Caribbean Princess in March 2018 and now Island Princess in May 2018.

Ocean Medallion is based on a coin-sized device that can be pocketed or worn on the wrist or as a pendant. It then branches out as part of the larger O·C·E·A·N (One Cruise Experience Access Network) for passenger personalization. Besides the physical device, the Ocean Compass links everything as a digital concierge on ship displays, cabin televisions and guests’ mobile devices.

Specific features include expedited embarkation and stateroom access, not unlike Royal Caribbean. Additional capabilities encompass real-time ship navigation, friends and family locating, messaging, dining and spa reservations and even drink and food ordering with crew delivering to wherever a guest is located currently or as scheduled.

Behind the scenes, Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) systems support the platform.

MSC for Me

While less hyped initially, MSC Cruises will actually beat Carnival to the punch when it launches its own MSC for Me experience first on the MSC Meraviglia in June 2017, followed by MSC Seaside in December.

Again, MSC’s thinking is similar, but the line already plans to implement it fleet-wide across its upcoming eleven ships and existing twelve. Its goals extend to facilitating the crew with better means of servicing 170 different nationalities and their languages onboard.

MSC promises over 130 smart features backed—on the Meraviglia for example—by 144 interactive screens, 244 information screens, 31 virtual staterooms screens, 81 video wall monitors, 2,244 NFC-equipped cabins, 3,050 Bluetooth beacons, 700 access points and 1,200 CCTV cameras.

READ MORE: MSC Cruises' Newest Ships Will Offer Awesome Digital Assistant for Guests

Guests will also have wearable bands and can access everything via a mobile app as well. Specific abilities will comparably include stateroom access, live navigation (accurate to 16 feet), concierge booking services and check-in.

Beyond that, MSC for Me will allow guests to book trips, utilize virtual reality to preview shore excursions, view and share cruise gallery images, receive preference-based geo-located recommendations and even be facially-recognized by cameras for more customized service.

Outlook

First, how will the technology be received by Princess and MSC guests? Second, will Carnival Cruise Line join the fold as a standard mainstream competitor? Will Norwegian Cruise Line as well?

Currently, Norwegian relies more on way-finding and reservation kiosks rather than wearables, and even Royal Caribbean has room to grow to match Carnival and MSC.

Of course, the implementation of such ship-wide systems is by no means quick and easy, and any investments towards such platforms need to be made wisely and as future-proofed as possible. One thing is for certain: old-school cruising is gone and the new high-tech equivalent is here to stay.

Royal Caribbean working on mobile app

Harmony of the Seas

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. said it has a new mobile app under development that should be ready to debut this summer.

On a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter and year-end earnings, RCCL chairman Richard Fain said the project, dubbed Excalibur internally, is expected to debut on six to 11 ships over the next year, followed by a roll out on one to two ships a month after that. RCCL's major brands are Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity Cruises.

Fain didn't say much about what the new app will do, but said it will "reflect all of the technologies available today." He said the Wow bands, a wearable RFID device that assumes many functions of the key card, have been "extremely effective in simplifying the process for our guests. But it's also obvious that the technology has improved a lot in the last two years."

Wow bands are available to guests on Quantum-class ships (including Anthem of the Seas) and the Harmony of the Seas.

He called Carnival Corp's recent unveiling of its Ocean Medallion and Ocean Compass personal technology "a very positive thing for our industry. It was a terrific roll out and got a lot of positive publicity which in the end inures to the benefit of all of us."

In other topics discussed on the call, CFO Jason Liberty said that the company's Wave period "is off to a strong start," and that it is "trending nicely higher" from last year. He said officials are particularly encouraged by strength in North America.

"Over the past three months, bookings have been well above last year's levels," Liberty said. "We turn the year in a record booked position. We have fewer staterooms to sell for the year."

In the fourth quarter, RCCL had net income of $261 million up from $206 million a year earlier. Revenue was flat.

For all of 2016, net income was $1.2 billion, up from $665.8 million. In 2015, RCCL was impacted by a write-down for the Pullmantur brand. Revenue in 2016 grew 2.4%, to $8.49 billion.

RCCL forecasted 2017 earnings in the range of $1.48 billion to $1.53 billion.

Princess Announce Their Most Technologically Advanced Cruise Ship Is Set To Launch

Princess Announce Their Most Technologically Advanced Cruise Ship Is Set To Launch

Regal Princess

Princess Cruises has just announced it has placed an order for its sixth Royal Class vessel.

Guests can expect the 3,560 guest ship to be delivered in 2022, but is still yet to be named.

The next ship for the line will feature signature elements that have become synonymous with the Princess guest experience, such as a central atrium hub with multiple dining, entertainment and retail venues; Movies Under The Stars with the largest outdoor screen at sea; and 81% of all staterooms with balconies.

Princess’ newly announced vessel will also feature the recently released Ocean Medallion Class, including the Ocean Medallion, a first-of-its-kind wearable device that promises to offer enhanced services and a more personalised experience for guests.

The new technology is set to debut aboard Regal Princess on Nov. 13 on Ocean Medallion Class cruises from Port Everglades, and will follow on Royal Princess and Caribbean Princess in early 2018, the cruise company has said

The yet-to-be-named Princess ship will be built at Fincantieri’s shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy, and further details will be announced in due course.

The line’s vice president UK and Europe, Tony Roberts, has stated: ‘The decision to grow our fleet is testament of the success of Princess Cruises around the world. With four new ships now due for delivery, starting with Majestic Princess in March, these are incredibly exciting times for Princess Cruises.’

Carnival Corp & PLC, cruise giant that owns Princess Cruises, made this announcement on the 19th January, along with a new ship for its Holland America Line brand.

The new 99,500-ton, 2,660-passenger Holland America ship will be the third in its new Pinnacle class of ship. It will join sister ships ms Koningsdam — now sailing from Port Everglades for the winter season — and the Nieuw Statendam, currently under construction and set to debut in November 2018. 

Company CEO for Carnival Corp , Arnold Donald, has stated: “Using our strategic fleet enhancement plan to introduce new ships is an important part of our measured capacity growth strategy, which includes replacing less efficient ships with newer, larger and more efficient vessels.” 

With Thursday’s agreement, Carnival Corp. now has 19 new ships scheduled to be delivered across its corporate fleet between 2017 and 2022. The company’s cruise lines also includes Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Seabourn, Cunard, Fathom, P&O Cruises (UK), P&O Cruises (Australia) and AIDA Cruises.

Seabourn Encore christened in Singapore

On the dais during the Seabourn Encore's christening were (from left) godmother Sarah Brightman, ship captain Mark Dexter and Seabourn president Rick Meadows.

SINGAPORE -- With bright yellow two-person Chinese lion dancers prowling the audience, along with illuminated stilt walkers, a troupe of drummers and a long pink paper dragon carried on poles by a half-dozen bearers, Seabourn christened its newest vessel in this hub of Asian shipping.

The 600-passenger Seabourn Encore becomes Seabourn's fourth ship, in one swoop returning the line to the capacity it had prior to selling three 200-passenger ships to Windstar Cruises in 2013.

"Encore marks a major step forward in the growth of our company," Seabourn president Rick Meadows said before introducing godmother Sarah Brightman to the audience, which included 1,050 passengers from the Encore and the Seabourn Sojourn, also docked at the modernistic Marina Bay Cruise Center.

Inside the terminal, they watched projection screens showing the ship's hull as Brightman pushed a button that sent the traditional champagne bottle careening into the side of the ship.

It smashed, triggering a blizzard of gold and black confetti inside the hall. Brightman, a classical crossover vocalist who has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, did not sing for the event.

The Encore departed later in the evening on its 10-day inaugural cruise that will end in Bali.

An illuminated stilt walker was part of the pre-event entertainment at the Seabourn Encore christening. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst

On hand for the event were Micky Arison and Arnold Donald, chairman and CEO, respectively, of Carnival Corp., which owns the Seabourn luxury brand.

Donald flew in by private jet fresh off an appearance at the Las Vegas consumer electronics show, where he unveiled Carnival's new Ocean Medallion technology.

In his remarks, Donald reprised a favorite theme that this is "the golden age of cruising" and that the audience should feel fortunate it is living in an age when beautiful ships like the Encore are built.

Singapore's minister for trade and industry, S. Iswaran, said that Carnival Corp. ships represent about 20% of the annual cruise calls in Singapore.

He said the island city-state has a "rising appeal to sophisticated travelers" and that it is "the home port of choice in southeast Asia."

He noted that the World Bank for a decade put Singapore atop its list of easiest places to do business. It fell last year to number two behind New Zealand when the bank revised its ranking formula.

The Encore represents a refinement of Seabourn's Odyssey-class vessels delivered from 2009-2011. It has an extra deck that provides space for a small sushi restaurant and a larger chop house created by celebrity chef Thomas Keller.

Designer Adam Tihany reimagined the interiors in a softer, more curvaceous mode. He has also designed the second ship in the class, Seabourn Ovation, which is currently under construction and is scheduled to launch in spring 2018.