Norwegian Cruise Line’s Sun returns to Port Canaveral for the second season of popular cruises from the Port to Cuba, as well as excursions to the Bahamas. Starting Monday, April 15, the Norwegian Sun, which in 2018 became the first home-ported cruise ship to sail from Port Canaveral to Cuba, will offer four-, five- and seven-day cruises to Havana, Cuba, with select sailings also calling to Key West during its four-day cruises.
Princess Cruises and Fincantieri announced on Thursday the signing of the final contracts for the construction of two next-generation 175,000-ton cruise ships, which will be the largest ships ever built so far in Italy, with deliveries scheduled in Monfalcone in late 2023 and in March 2025. This announcement follows the initial signing of a memorandum of agreement between the two parties in July 2018.
Costa Crociere celebrated the technical launch of the new flagship Costa Smeralda at the Meyer shipyard in Turku, Finland. During the ceremony, the ship officially touched the sea for the first time. The celebration, which saw the participation of the top management of Costa Cruises and the Meyer shipyards, followed the protocol established by the maritime tradition, with the flooding of the basin where the ship has taken shape in recent months.
The Italian brand of Carnival Corporation & plc, this week officially took delivery of Costa Venezia, its first ship designed specifically to offer the best of Italy to the Chinese market. Costa Venezia is part of an expansion plan that includes a total of seven ships being delivered to the Costa Group by 2023.
Argentina, Chile and Uruguay will be making a joint presentation at the next Seatrade Cruise Global 2019, in Miami, as part of a joint strategy to attract more cruise tourism to the region. The announcement was done by Uruguay's ports authority, Alberto Diaz who hosted a meeting of tourism and sea terminals representatives from the three countries.
Two MSC cruise ships collided at the Port of Buenos Aires. One of the ships somehow lost control and hit another causing some damage. It was all caught on video.
In an industry-first, events took place at Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy, to mark the construction progress for each of the 3,660-guest Sky Princess, Enchanted Princess and a sixth Royal-class ship yet to be named. For Sky Princess, which will launch in October this year, a Madrina ceremony was held.
Chilean cruise operators and travel agencies have praised a bill approved by Congress, the Coastal traffic law, which allows cruise vessels with a 400 passenger capacity or more, and even smaller if there are no Chilean similar vessels, to sail along the country's ports.
Good news: prices for many cruises in January 2019 are significantly lower than they were a year ago. However, there are major differences by cruise line. While the analysis found that the average cruise price per day actually increased by around 3% – from US$ 397 to US$ 407 per person per night – it also showed substantial price discounts for certain cruise lines.
MSC Cruises has celebrated the float out of MSC Grandiosa at the shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France where the ship is being built. She has now been moved to a wet dock, where work on the ship will continue until her delivery in October 2019.