MSC Adds Short Cruises

Next winter MSC Cruises will be adding four short cruises to their Caribbean program from Ft. Lauderdale.

The 3- and 5-night sailings will be interspersed among MSC Poesia's regular 7- and 10-night cruises during the 2009-2010 Caribbean season.

Details appeared in the April 13 (2009) edition of Cruise News Daily.

Holland America's Passengers to Discuss What They've Read

Holland America Line is set to begin a new program in May on their longer cruises (14-days or longer). The ship's librarian will lead a discussion of a currently popular best-seller in the Explorations Cafe. The selection for the "Explorations Book Club" for each cruise will appear on the line's website two weeks before sailing to enable passengers to have read the book prior to embarking on the cruise.

Norwegian Epic Construction Progresses

A significant milestone in the construction of Norwegian Cruise Line's Norwegian Epic was reached last week when the bow section of the ship was attached to the hull, completing its lower portion, the part that touches the water. Photos of the operation at the STX Europe yard at St. Nazaire, France, are on the Cruise News Daily website.

The 153,000-gross-ton vessel is scheduled for delivery at the end of May 2010.

Galveston Recovery

Hurricane Ike came ashore at Galveston seven months ago closing the port only for a matter of days, but it took several weeks for cruise ships to return. The primary reason was because so much of the tourist infrastructure had been severely damaged.

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article today reporting on the area's recovery.

More Trouble for Alaska

Cruise lines recently announced cuts that would bring about 100,000 fewer passengers to Alaska in 2010. Part of the reason is that demand for Alaska is down, so rather than discount to fill the ships, they are reducing the supply of berths to more closely match demand and therefore increase pricing. Carnival Corp has already said that if the 2010 cuts aren't enough to move pricing as much as they need, there will be more reductions in capacity in 2011 for their brands (Carnival, Holland America and Princess).

Now the Fairbanks News Miner reports that interest in travel to Alaska is apparently waning because an annual blitz of television shows which spotlight Alaska and normally generates a surge of bookings has failed to produce that flurry of bookings this year.

Meanwhile the state's citizens continue to push for measures to increase the costs for cruise lines operating in Alaska (see our earlier CND article), making it more profitable for cruise lines to deploy their ships elsewhere.