SCHIFFFAHRT | SHIPPING
SCHIFFFAHRT | SHIPPING Still growing cruise fleet in troubled waters © Meyer Werft Floating out of »Disney Wish« at Meyer Werft in Papenburg 36 HANSA – International Maritime Journal 04 | 2022
SCHIFFFAHRT | SHIPPING The cruise industry had to navigate around several cliffs in the last two years, and to some extent it still does. But there are positive developments and various movements in the fleet and in the newbuilding market. Are we on our way out of the pandemic? By Arnulf Hader Once more, analysing passenger numbers is not very useful. Cruise industry association CLIA reported 5.8 mill. passengers in 2021 compared to an annual capacity of more than 30 mill. The fleet development, however, has not stopped. 2021 was the year when new ships were handed over to the owners which had been postponed from 2020, while other deliveries were postponed from 2021 to 2022. This is why an updated list of 2021 deliveries follows here. The exact date of handover is not very relevant because many ships went into lay-up before cruises were allowed again in the pandemic. The total tonnage and capacity of these 23 vessels is smaller than the totals to come this year because of the larger share of small expedition vessels. This year some more big vessels will result in a total of 44.000 beds. In case no new orders will be added – a scenario which is quite realistic –122,000 beds in 5.3 mill. GT of new tonnage will still be in the order books by the end of December. This allows to complete further 39,000 beds in 2023 and 33,000 beds in 2024. The order books of the Royal Caribbean Group extend until 2026 and these of MSC and NCL into 2027. The order book showed very high figures when Covid led to a global standstill of cruise shipping two years ago. Within a few months, ship owners and yards had come to agreements to delay deliveries by several months or years. As expected, there is a lack of new orders now for two years without new contracts and projects – except for two smaller ones. Today, the three leading cruise ship builders are still busy because of the extraordinary order book from two years ago, which is now nearing a normal fleet to order book ratio. The following graphs show – like the others – the figures for the end of 2021 and the forecast for the end of 2022. They show also that 2020 is the only year in a long development when the fleet capacity stagnated because of unusual high sales for scrap. The high column in 2020 underlines the high scrap sales. 2022 fleet forecast The forecast takes into account the delivery of 20 new ships including those which had been planned for delivery in 2021 but could not be completed in time. The largest ship by number of guests could be the »Global Dream« with 9,500 beds in 2,500 cabins. The delivery depends on a new owner – who is still to be found – to buy the ship as it is in the insolvent shipyard at the Wismar site of MV Werften. Another new ship above 200,000 GT is the »MSC World Europa«, the first of four under construction at Chantiers de l’Atlantique. The »MSC Seascape«, to be overtaken a few weeks later from Fincantieri, is not much smaller. The Carnival Group expects four ships, among them are two of the LNG ships of the Meyer Werft Group with more than 180,000 GT and 5,200 lower beds for the Carnival Cruise Line and the P&O brand. Princess Cruises gets the last of six 3,660 bed »Princesses« and Seabourn gets a © Arnulf Hader © Arnulf Hader HANSA – International Maritime Journal 04 | 2022 37
