Even Cruises Speak German

Miami - On Ocean Drive, the cars blast out loud music at all hours: and the boisterous merriment has spread to the annual collective ritual of the cruise ship industry: “We are growing and we want to be really big,” said the top managers of the four largest companies in the world on stage in front of more than 1,000 people. They were assembled for the conference that marked the beginning of the Cruise Ship Miami event, the seatrade show which will revert to its former name next year. The format for 2015 is different – gone are the unvarnished interviews with CEOs of companies in the sector of previous years, a sign of a change which will also be a geographical one for the next three years when the event will move to Fort Lauderdale, while the Miami Convention Centre is closed for renovation. Pierfrancesco Vago, the chief executive of MSC Cruises, Arnold Donald, Carnival Group’s leader, Richard Fain of Royal Caribbean and Frank Del Rio of Norwegian Cruise Line, smiled as they explained budgets and prospects.

And the numbers show a growth in the European market, as well. In 2015, CLIA, the association of cruise ship companies, said that even in the weak European market there has been an increase in the number of passengers, which has reached the record figure of 6.39 million, an increase over the previous year of 0.5%. The situation is different from country to country, but an historic shift has taken place, not unexpected by the industry: the Germans have exceeded the English as the European nation with the most people to take a cruise as a vacation. The German market accounted for 1.77 million passengers, an increase of 5% compared to 2013 and become the second largest in the world after the United States. The English are just behind them at 1.6 million, but the figures indicate a decrease of almost 5%, caused by the shifting of ships away from English ports. In the Mediterranean the downward trend in the Italian market has been confirmed (down 3.1% to 843,000 passengers) and the unstoppable rise in French cruise passengers that has hit a record high with an increase of 13%.

Nevertheless many continue to bet on the Mediterranean: the fleet in this area of the world will increase capacity by 0.9% over the course of 2015, and this is the only positive figure, together with the expected supply growth in Asia. This means that there is still a market in the Mediterranean, and Michael Thamm, C.E.O. of Costa Cruises, is very pleased as the Costa Group is the leading cruise company in Italy and Germany, through its Aida and Costa brands. “Every other cruise reserved in Germany is on a Costa Group ship,” the company announced that in France it controls 45% of the market, and in Spain, 40%. “To be a leader in the largest European markets is an incentive for us,” the C.E.O. explained, “We will expand our leading position in Europe and also in Asia, with a great variety of innovations and sustained growth.”

But Europe is not the only market, and MSC has made an historic announcement: the new Seaside-class ship, built by Fincantieri and to be delivered in November, 2017, will be based in Miami for the entire year and could represent only the first stage in an even larger investment in the North American market. One item in the company’s investment plan is the updating of the cruise ship terminal which will be exclusively dedicated to the MSC Seaside. “The Seaside project is part of a broad industrial plan for a value of €5.1 billion, which will allow the company to double its capacity by 2022,” Gianni Onorato, MSC Cruises’ C.E.O. explained. And the characteristics of the ship seem to be designed specifically for this market, with its spacious promenade overlooking the sea and on-board water park. Much more so than the MSC Divina, in any case, which only spent a season in the Caribbean Islands. MSC’s other flagship, the new Vista-class ship, will be stationed in Genoa as soon as it is delivered.