A sad sight

[Ivan Cloherty]

#10, yes John, I'd rather be optimistic than pessimistic, the world has survived fire, floods and pestilence before and we now have better means to do it 'IF' people obey the rules, rather than bleating about the rules infringing their human rights and personal freedoms. At times we have to make personal sacrifices for the good of all, alas some don't see it that way.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Just an update if of interest. Cruise ships.......... MSC have 11 new vessels on order, Norwegian have 9 on order, others have 12 on order, on order means under construction. There are many cruise companies who do not publish what they have on order and neither do some shipyards disclose their clients names as per their contract obligations.

One of the industry leaders said these are vessels to be delivered 2021 -2025, there is no need to order further vessels at this time as those vessels which entered service in 2019/20 and those scheduled to enter before 2025 will cover the industries expanding market for many many years. He said there is a big market to be tapped 500 million people take annual holidays only 30 million go on cruises so their market is opening for them as the new vessels will offer cruises to suit all tastes which will entice people aboard who had never considered cruising before.

[Fouro]

Re # 13.

It looks a 'cart before the horse' situation to me as ordering all these new passenger liners should be delayed until a vaccine to destroy the Coronavirus is found.

Fouro.

[Tony Taylor]

Re # 13.

It looks a 'cart before the horse' situation to me as ordering all these new passenger liners should be delayed until a vaccine to destroy the Coronavirus is found.

Fouro.

it may be the case that the orders were placed before all this sh-te kicked off.

[Red Lead Ted]

Agree with that Tony, I watched a T.V. Program Saturday night on this very subject, Once a ship has had a dose of Covid its labeled and will get turned away from most of these exotic ports around the world from berthing, The industry is on a downward spiral at present, And which has been said until there is a vaccine tried and proven people will stop cruising on these fleets. Terry.

[Ivan Cloherty]

it may be the case that the orders were placed before all this sh-te kicked off.

First the yard and the owners have an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) this is the initial talks between the parties of what the basic ideas of what the vessel will be like and the intentions of both parties, this can take anything from 3 - 6 months to sort out, after this follows the MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) this is the finalised edition of the MOU where all the important salient points have been met, this can also take 3 -6 months to cross all the 't's and dot all the 'i's. After this comes the COA (Contract of Agreement) which is in effect the MOA signed off. Any alterations/modifications requested by the purchasers are now subject to additional costs, So there is 6 -12 months (or even longer) before a single piece of steel has been cut. Then depending upon the complexity of the vessel, the number of alterations etc it will be another 18 - 24 months (or even longer) before a vessel is finally handed over to the owners. Should the owners cancel the order after COA has been signed then the owners could be penalised with a 50% penalty cost of the whole contract value for the vessel or vessels so cancelled, the only winners then are lawyers over a protacted period, the losers will be the yard as they will have lost tenders due to their yard being programmed as fully occupied for a number of years, There are no 5 minute decisions involved.

[Keith at Tregenna]

Adding out of interest:

The brand new ghost ship: P&O takes delivery of its BIGGEST ever cruise-liner that weights 185,000 tons and cost hundreds of millions... but it won't welcome passengers until at least 2021.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ise-liner.html

[happy daze john in oz]

#16 Who would know if they simply changed the ships name??? Thought I would throw that cat among the pigeons LOL

Many a ship has done that when change of ownership.

[Doc Vernon]

Re #18 Yes Keith now just look at tat size! Its far too big, cost far too much Money and will it now make any Money at all?
Next thing with all these Monsters of the Sea they will have to be looking at making Larger Ports , the old ones will become too small ,now there is another thing, how much will that cost even to try and Enlarge the current Ports.
Only other thing when Ships get too large is to Anchor out , and send passengers ashore by smaller craft!
What about when starting a Trip, and they cannot get the Ship in Port, again the Passengers will have to get aboard by small charter craft, or next best will be to send them on board with a Helicopter, with the sizes of those Monsters will have no probs landing a few Copters! LOL
May be a Jump Jet too who knows!!
No not for me, can you imagine an outbreak on board one of those! Eeeeeek!!! Now that would be a "Sad Sight"
What about if anything happened at Sea, there will not be enough Life boats to rescue all those people ! Lots to ponder over.

[Ivan Cloherty]

[QUOTE=Doc Vernon;355353]Re #18 Yes Keith now just look at tat size! Its far too big, cost far too much Money and will it now make any Money at all?
Next thing with all these Monsters of the Sea they will have to be looking at making Larger Ports , the old ones will become too small ,now there is another thing, how much will that cost even to try and Enlarge the current Ports.
QUOTE]

Doc, these cruise companies are in constant contact with port authorities all over the world and already work together to enhance cruise ship and cruise ship terminals. Lots of ports agree to extend their facilities so that cruise ships can berth at dedicated terminals. The port authorities work with their local councils discussing what benefits the berths will bring to the local economy and the prospects will vary from port to port. Shops will benefit, local coach companies will benefit, as will other tour operators depending on locations, local infrastructure will benefit. Of course some ports do not want more cruise ship frequency such as Venice and Dubrovnic as they have reached their tourist facility capacity. Things are not done in isolation cruise companies/port authorities/local councils all work in tandem. There are plenty of professional sites, publications to consult rather than relying upon the ramblings of media 'Shipping correspondents' who wouldn't know port from starboard or aft from for'd.

Here in Torquay the Mayor wanted to build a deep water pier to attract larger cruise vessels, wiser heads in the Council pointed out that Torquay itself would not benefit as the town has nothing to offer as far as attractions are concerned and people would be sheperded onto coaches to visit distant places, it was then pointed out we have the worst road infrastucture in the UK with narrow country roads. Marshalling areas would have to be constructed near the piers for coaches for embarking and disembarking coach passengers and the land areas were not available. We attract the smaller vessels but all those passengers wishing to go ashore have to be tendered backwards and forwards which the local infrastructure/tour operators can handle

Cruising is a personal taste, some love it, some have no interest, but as said in a previous post there is a huge untapped market out there and the people in charge will probably know their market and future prospects better than any of us on this site or so called 'Shipping correspondents' and 2021 after all is not too far away.

As for safety aspects in regards to evacuation etc, that is a whole new ball game and far to long to enter into here, however we have Master Mariners on here who are avid cruisers and are far better qualified than I am to comment on how they see the safety aspects of evacuation of cruise liners with their elderly and infirm passengers.