Tag Archives: Celebrity Xpedition

January Update: Here Are the Latest Five Cruise Ship Moves

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Cruise Industry News looks at some of the key ship transactions and moves that took place in recent weeks.

Pacific Explorer
Company: P&O Cruises Australia
Capacity: 1,998 guests
Tonnage: 77,000
Year built: 1997
Move: Sold to Resorts World Cruises
Date: December 2024

Currently in service for P&O Cruises Australia, the Pacific Explorer was sold to Resorts World Cruises in December.

Set to be renamed Star Scorpio, the 1997-built ship will launch service for its new operator in March, offering a series of cruises in Southeast Asia.

Maud
Company: HX Expeditions
Capacity: 500 guests
Tonnage: 16,151
Year built: 2003
Move: Transferred to Hurtigruten’s coastal service
Date: November 2024

The Maud was transferred back to Hurtigruten’s coastal service in November after three years offering expedition cruises for HX.

Before resuming its regular schedule on the Norwegian coast, the 2003-built ship regained its original name, the Midnatsol.

Renaissance
Company: CFC – Compagnie Française de Croisières
Capacity: 1,258 guests
Tonnage: 55,451
Year built: 1993
Move: To be jointly operated by CFC, Ambassador and Corendon in 2025-26
Date: January 2025

Now part of the Ambassador Group, CFC’s Renaissance is set to spend the upcoming winter season in the Caribbean as part of a joint operation with Ambassador Cruise Line and Corendon.

Starting in October, the ship will offer itineraries departing from Barbados, Martinique and Curaçao as part of a fly-cruise operation aimed at guests from the UK, France and the Netherlands.

Celebrity Xpedition
Company: Celebrity Cruises
Capacity: 100 guests
Tonnage: 2,842
Year built: 2001
Move: Handed over to National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions
Date: January 2025

The Xpedition was delivered to National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions in January 2025, after completing a final sailing for Celebrity Cruises.

The 2001-built ship is now set to undergo a refurbishment before joining the fleet of its new operator as the National Geographic Gemini in March.

Celebrity Xploration
Company: Celebrity Cruises
Capacity: 16 guests
Tonnage: 317
Year built: 2007
Move: Handed over to National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions
Date: January 2025

The Xploration was also handed over to National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions in January, after wrapping up its sailing career with Celebrity Cruises.

Currently in Ecuador, the catamaran, which will be renamed the National Geographic Delfina, is scheduled to undergo a refit ahead of its debut for Lindblad next February.

Damen: Growing Cruise Ship Drydocks Scheduled to 2030

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Damen is seeing growing project scopes and has ships scheduled up to 2030 according to the 2023 Drydock and Refurbishment Report by Cruise Industry News.

“We have exact dates up to 2030 already,” said Rogier van der Laan, global product manager of cruise maintenance and upgrade services at Damen.

“We are seeing bookings far out. There are three back-to-back ships scheduled in 2025, and one is an especially huge conversion,” van der Laan added.

Damen completed multiple projects in 2022 as well. Among 2022 highlights were the Emerald Princess drydocking in Rotterdam, the Seabourn Odyssey in Curacao as well as the Celebrity Xpedition, and the winter conversion of the Maasdam into the Renaissance for French start-up CFC.

The former Maasdam arrived at Damen’s Brest, France, facility in October, entered drydock in November and is scheduled to start sailing in the spring.

The yard will handle steelwork, maintenance and more, and help interior contractors with logistics, container shipments and more.

“With the supply chain problems, logistics can be a challenge. For the yard, it’s not a problem, but getting supplies from the manufacturers can be a big issue and the price is going up everywhere,” he said.

Overall, van der Laan said the outlook was “very good” for the company’s yards, with its European facilities looking after ships of any size and its Curacao drydock perfectly suited for smaller ships and expedition ships moving between the polar regions.

Across the industry, van der Laan said that Tier III updates for ships would be a trend in coming years, allowing them to sail in sensitive areas.

Planning has tightened up with changing budgets and project scopes from cruise customers, meaning five to six months out instead of a year for a project plan.

“But we are flexible. It’s always changing,” van der Laan said. “There can be change orders or unforeseen steelwork, and we can do that.”

A new era of cruise tonnage replaces an old one

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Celebrity Cruises' Xpedition, which has the look of its time: More portholes than private balconies, for example.

Celebrity Cruises’ Xpedition, which has the look of its time: More portholes than private balconies, for example. Photo Credit: Daniel Romagosa/Celebrity Cruises
by Tom Stieghorst
Back when I first started writing about cruises, in the mid-1980s, one of the things that really excited me about the job was the modern new cruise ships being built in places like Finland and France.
They were getting bigger, fancier, with terrific new amenities and style. It was a pleasure to be able to describe them to readers who at that time probably didn’t know what the new ships were all about.
But there were other ships that I toured, older tonnage that still had a niche in the industry. I remember a lot of Greek ships that were way past their prime; Scandinavian car ferries converted to cruise duty; and ocean liners that were years out of date.
I was reminded of those days recently while touring Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Flora, which is nearing completion at a shipyard in Rotterdam. It is the first ship purpose-built for the Galapagos Islands and looks like it will be a dream to sail.
The Flora is a new standard for an area of the globe that has been getting by on older tonnage for a long time. Galapagos-based ships include Celebrity’s own Celebrity Xpedition, which was built in 2001 for Sun Bay Cruises and acquired by Celebrity in 2004 when it began cruising there.
The Xpedition has the classic look of ships of its era: more portholes than balconies, for example. It carries 96 passengers compared to 100 for the Celebrity Flora, but at 2,842 gross tons, it is only half the size of the 5,739 gross-ton Flora.
A rendering of the Celebrity Flora, an example of the new standard in cruising, which will replace the Xpedition in the Galapagos.
A rendering of the Celebrity Flora, an example of the new standard in cruising, which will replace the Xpedition in the Galapagos.
To be sure, seeing the wildlife in the Galapagos is the major focus of any cruise there; the hardware is secondary. But if you can go in style, comfort and, indeed, luxury, why not?
One of Celebrity’s quasi-competitors in the Ecuadoran islands is going through a similar transition with its product. Next year Silversea Cruises will introduce the Silver Origin in the Galapagos and retire the Silver Galapagos, which was once part of the original, 1990s-era, Renaissance Cruises fleet of 100-passenger ships.
These new ships are going to raise the bar for the other licensed vessels, many of them small, that offer cruises in the Galapagos — much the same way that the Carnival Fantasy and Sovereign of the Seas prompted some changes for the Chandris family when it was sailing classic ships like the Britanis out of Florida. John Chandris eventually concluded that was a hopeless strategy, and he started Celebrity Cruises to focus on newly built ships such as the Celebrity Horizon. Today, Celebrity survives and thrives as a division of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., which bought it in 1997.
Silversea Cruises has also joined the RCCL stable, by virtue of a sale of a 67% interest last year. One of the first things RCCL management did after the purchase was to announce a new Silversea ship for the Galapagos.
The two RCCL ships are going to set a new benchmark for cruising in the Galapagos and may spell the end for some of the less contemporary vessels in that market.