A total of 11 new cruise ships with an offer of more than 30,000 seats will begin operating throughout 2024, with an investment that reaches 7,000 million dollars (almost 6,400 million euros). This is the main indication that shipping companies have been recovering little by little from the strong setback caused by the pandemic, which practically paralyzed the sector. For the next five years, there are also investments worth another 32 billion euros in the portfolio, which will be used to build another 51 new ships of all types and sizes for a sector that moved more than 30 million cruise passengers last year. the world. A five-year period marked by investment in new technologies and fuels that should make cruises a substantially more sustainable sector.
According to the sector's annual report, the first cruise ship of the new fleet that will come into operation this year is the Icon of the Seas, from the Royal Caribbean shipping company, which will be inaugurated in Miami at the end of this month with a luxury godfather: the footballer Leo Messi. The ship is, with more than 5,600 seats, one of the largest in this year's fleet, but not the only one of the shipping company, which also hopes to inaugurate the Utopia of the Seas in July, another behemoth with 5,700 seats. Between them, Royal Caribbean will have invested more than 3 billion euros this year.
Disney Cruises Line is also trying to take a career in the sector and will debut at the end of the year the sister ship of the Disney Wish, the Disney Treasure, with 900,000 million euros of investment in homage to Aladdin. In the super-luxury sector, with an increasingly greater presence in international waters, the Ilma, from the new ultra-luxury cruise line The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, debuts. Princess Cruises, Virgin Voyages – which presents travel options only for adults with the Brilliant Lady –, Silverseas Cruises and American Cruises Lines are other companies with ships scheduled to debut this year.
According to data from the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), 98% of the ships built from 2019 to those scheduled for 2028 have been or will be made in European shipyards, which translates into an economic injection of 56 billion of euros. Ficantieri, the Italian shipyards in Trieste, currently have five vessels ready for delivery and are the shipyards at the top of the construction list. They are followed by Meyer, in Turku (Finland), and Chantier de l'Atlantique, in France.
“Each new generation of ships is around 15% more efficient than the previous one,” highlights the CLIA, whose president, Kelly Craighead, highlights that “the ships of the future are being built today; These will use new and more sustainable technologies. The introduction of these technologies and the numerous pilot projects and tests that are being carried out demonstrate that we are facing an innovative and pioneering industry in the adoption of technologies that help us navigate towards a more sustainable future.” In this sense, more than 80% of the ships that will leave the shipyards this year to serve cruise passengers around the world will run on liquefied natural gas, but with engines capable of adapting to any other future fuel.
