With most cruise lines out of operation for nearly a year, and a wave of ships sold off or scrapped, it seems almost counter-intuitive that the companies have over 100 new ships on order—and they are not canceling or delaying them.
TPG, the ‘Points Guy’ loyalty site compiled the figures and found those 100+ ocean-going ships on order for an industry that presently has fewer than 300 such ships in all its fleets.
Some of the build-out is attributable to new entrants to the field, such as Virgin Voyages, which just named the third of its four planned ships while the first, Scarlet Lady, is yet to sail because of the pandemic and Viking, the river-cruise leader that has been rapidly expanding its ocean cruises and has a dozen new ships on order.
But many of the newest, and especially largest, on order are for companies which have shed older, smaller ships over the past year, and are more than replacing them in hopes the industry will resume its years-long expansion.
Arnold Donald, CEO of Carnival, which operates nine brands and is the world’s largest cruise company, explains it this way: “There are plenty of new ships on order, but to be honest with you, they are going to be needed. There will be demand. There will be need for capacity. Shipbuilding will stay robust in terms of bringing new ships into the global fleets.”
And, as other execs pointed out, since ships take years to build, the industry has to order based on future forecasts, on what they think the market will be several years from now. Donald has pointed out the room for growth: 500 million people a year take vacations annually, but only 30 million cruise. And many of that 30 million cruise repeatedly.
