The pandemic dealt a heavy blow to the industry, raising questions about whether it would ever recover.
Cruise companies are now seeing customers return.
The Cruise Lines International Association has predicted that passenger volume will surpass pre-pandemic levels with 31.5 million passengers in 2023.
“After the restrictions are gone and the situation has eased up, we are seeing that the market is coming back very strong,” Meyer said.
BIGGER IS BETTER?
With a gross tonnage of 250,800 – five times the size of the Titanic – Icon of the Seas will snatch the title of the world’s largest cruise ship from Royal Caribbean’s current flagship, Wonder of the Seas.
Meyer Turku also has two more similar sized Icon-class vessels in their order books.
“We have seen over the last decade that cruise ships have become bigger,” said Alexis Papathanassis, professor of Cruise Management at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences.
Papathanassis noted that “there are obvious economic benefits” to mega-sized ships, reducing the cost of individual passengers.
With its seven pools, a park, waterslides, shopping promenades, ice skating rink and “more venues than any other ship”, larger vessels like the Icon of the Seas also offer more options for spending money on board.
This “in turn enables cruise companies to be more profitable”, he added.
The extra income is welcomed by the cruise lines – in order to survive Covid-19 lockdowns the cruise lines “had to take a lot of credit” they now have to pay back.
“It’s going to be a challenging time with financial austerity for cruise companies,” Papathanassis said, adding that he expected ticket prices to rise.
WHAT IS TOO BIG?
While “the tendency towards increasing the size of the ship is not going to stop”, Papathanassis believes “it will certainly be slowed down”.
The reason behind this is not engineering but rather the financial equation.
“The bigger the ships are, the higher the investment cost and the required technology know-how. And technological know-how does not come cheap,” Papathanassis explained.
Similarly, larger vessels come with their own unique challenges, such as port overcrowding, he noted.
As passenger numbers have grown, popular cruise destinations like the modest Arctic town of Longyearbyen in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, for example, have voiced concern over the lack of infrastructure to accommodate such large crowds.
Source: CNA
