Global Ambitions

Posted on 25 January, 2018 by Spacejunkie2

Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of MSC Cruises.

“In three years we will double our capacity and in 10 years we will triple it,” said Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of MSC Cruises.

In 2018 MSC will operate a fleet of 14 ships with an average size of 2,892 guests at double occupancy and is expected to be the largest operator by capacity in Europe. It has ambitious expansion plans in North America and China and is the market leader in South America and South Africa. By 2028 the company will have 24 ships in service, with an average size of 3,734 passengers.

“Our objective is to deliver a holiday experience which is unique to our customers and to tourism in general,” Vago told Cruise Industry News. “It’s also to expand the concept of cruising to the world,” Vago added.

Between now and 2026, MSC will take deliveries of ships on the Seaside, Meraviglia, Meraviglia Plus, Seaside EVO and the LNG-powered World Class platforms.

Vago described MSC as a global brand, with a premium level product offering at a contemporary price.

“Our common denominator is that we are a Mediterranean brand with the capability to fine-tune the experience to the area of operation,” Vago said. “We can fine-tune the product delivery.”

While its peers have a house of brands competing in the cruise market, MSC has a single brand with large ships.

“MSC has traditionally believed in organic growth,” Vago said.

But that doesn’t mean they may not one day explore other market segments as customers grow with the brand.

In Europe, Vago said the company has realized their ambition to conquer the market, also entering the business later than all their competitors.

That strategy is now expanding to the rest of the world, he said, and the plans will follow demand.

In China, the MSC Splendida is replacing the Lirica on a seasonal basis, upping summer capacity out of Shanghai. In South America, the new Seaview will sail from Brazil for winter 2018-2019.

In North America, the new Seaside is year-round, to be joined by the 2017-built Meraviglia come 2019.

“We have customers travelling to the Caribbean and we needed to introduce new ships, with a different platform,” Vago said. “We had the need to put more cabins and a new offering into the North American market if we wanted to evolve our brand there.

“We had one ship (in North America) and she was filled with customers from Europe. We did not have the opportunity to grow,” he continued. “There is an opportunity for MSC to grow in North America but we needed to create both the hardware and the software for the market. That is the vision behind the building of a very new platform and prototype, the MSC Seaside.

“The Seaside is a spirit of our leadership in many ways. We are setting the pace for innovation and we will see many reflections of this platform for years to come.”

The Seaview, a sister ship, will be delivered this summer. The Seaside EVO platform, essentially an enlarged version with more staterooms, will be launched in 2021, with a second ship scheduled for a 2023 delivery from Fincantieri.

What the year ahead holds for the industry

Posted on 2 January, 2018 by Spacejunkie2

Next Gen. Cruise ship for MSC.

Until recently, expedition cruising was a quiet corner of the ocean cruise business, with occasional new tonnage added to a small fleet of spartan ships sailing to wild and majestic places.

The ships are still small, but some are not so spartan anymore, and the expedition niche in 2018 is trending bigger.

By one estimate, at least 18 new expedition vessels are ready to debut over the next 24 months.

Setting the tone was the transfer in 2017 of the original Silversea Cruises ship, the Silver Cloud, to the line’s expedition fleet after conversion to an ice-hardened vessel capable of visiting both polar regions.

In 2018, the parade of new expedition builds begins in June with Le Laperouse, the start of a new class for the luxury expedition brand Ponant, which will add three more of the 180-passenger vessels by mid-2019.

The French brand will be joined this year by Norway’s Hurtigruten, which is expecting a new prototype, the 530-passenger Roald Amundsen, in August. Soon after, Scenic Cruises will take delivery of the 228-passenger Scenic Eclipse, another expedition-style vessel.

And by year’s end, Quark Expeditions plans to take delivery of a 176-passenger ship, currently under construction in Portugal, capable of polar sailing.

The boom is underway in part because small ships for expedition cruising are easier to finance than the $1 billion behemoths now being ordered by contemporary ocean cruise brands. And there is a greater variety of shipyards able to take on the projects.

Companies like Lindblad Expeditions have gone public and are tapping into public equity to finance expansion.
Expedition cruise lines expect that many consumers who have been introduced to cruise vacations by the larger lines in recent years are now familiar with the concept and will be receptive to trying a different kind of cruising.

New technologies

In addition to a bumper crop of expedition ships, 2018 will also see the advancement of technology on larger ships designed to save time and smooth out the points of friction to make cruising more enjoyable.

The technologies go by disparate names: Royal Caribbean International calls its package Excalibur, MSC Cruises has MSC for Me and Carnival has its Ocean platform, which includes the Ocean Medallion and Ocean Compass app. Luca Pronzati, MSC’s chief business innovation officer, said MSC’s technology will provide wayfinding onboard the ships, a reservations function and a more convenient way to access and personalize an activities agenda.

“You can schedule your day in an easy way,” Pronzati said. “It’s really changing the paradigm.”

Passengers can access the information through smartphones, on their in-cabin TVs or at screens in public areas of the ship. Pronzati said that the current functionality of MSC for Me, which is available on the MSC Meraviglia and the MSC Seaside, is a foundation and that the line is working on expanded capabilities, such as a digital concierge service.

Carnival’s Ocean platform, although it debuted for a limited number of passengers on Princess Cruises’ Regal Princess in November, will be rolled out onboard five more ships by the end of 2018.

Carnival expects its phased activation of the Ocean Medallion and Ocean Compass app onboard the Regal Princess to be finished by the first quarter of 2018, with all passengers being able to use it simultaneously thereafter. The two technologies are designed to give each cruise customer a more personalized vacation. It will, for example, provide suggestions for activities, drinks and meals based on stored preferences and proximity to venues on the ship.

Royal Caribbean’s package of onboard technologies, Excalibur, is expected to be on 15% of its fleet, starting with its most-recently delivered ships, within the first few months of 2018. It will be on a majority of Royal’s 25 ships by the end of the year.

One focus of Excalibur is expedited embarkation, which Royal calls “frictionless arrival.” It will allow passengers who input information before arrival come aboard without stopping at a check-in counter. Other applications include using it to order room service, open cabin doors and connect with friends and family onboard.

One of the ships that will benefit from Excalibur is Celebrity’s new Celebrity Edge, the first in a class of four ships ordered so far that will be a prototype for the design of Celebrity’s fleet.

The innovations already announced for the ship include “infinite verandas” in which balcony space is incorporated into a cabin and the Magic Carpet, a 90-ton platform that hangs off one side of the ship and will move between four decks, including the embarkation deck, where it will serve as a shore excursion platform.

Following a December 2018 christening in Fort Lauderdale by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, the Edge will make its first seven-day Caribbean cruise.

Celebrity plans to spend $400 million over the next six years to make the rest of its fleet look more like the Edge class.

The Cuba connection

Some of the oldest ships in the cruise industry will also be part of its newest trend in 2018: expanded cruises to Cuba. Norwegian Cruise Line has tapped the Norwegian Sun for four-day cruises to Cuba from Port Canaveral next summer. The Sun is joining Norwegian’s oldest ship, the Norwegian Sky, which does the itinerary from Miami.

Royal Caribbean is also expanding its capacity to Cuba, putting the 28-year-old Empress of the Seas in Miami for five-, seven- and eight-day trips that for the first time include Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba, while its second-oldest ship, the Majesty of the Seas, will provide four- and five-night Cuba itineraries from Tampa.

MSC Seaside christened in all-star affair

Posted on 1 January, 2018 by Spacejunkie2

From left, MSC Seaside Capt. Pier Paolo Scala, godmother Sophia Loren and MSC executive chairman Pierfrancesco Vago. Photo Credit: Ivan SarfattiMIAMI — MSC Cruises on Thursday held its first christening in North America for the MSC Seaside, a ship MSC hopes will crack open the doors to further growth for the largely European brand.

The 4,138-passenger ship will anchor MSC’s Caribbean itineraries with seven-day cruises from Miami, starting Jan 6.

MSC executive chairman Pierfrancesco Vago said that the MSC Divina, offering weekly departures from Miami, sources only 40% to 50% of passengers from North America. With the arrival of the Seaside, MSC hopes to boost that number to 80%.

Geneva-based MSC has 12 ships, with deployment ranging from South America to the Middle East to South Africa to China. The bulk of its business, however, comes from Europe with the Mediterranean countries of Italy, Spain and France being particularly important.

The Seaside christening was a star-studded affair with Italian actress Sophia Loren serving as godmother for the ship on a balmy Miami evening. Loren christened the first new ship for MSC in 2003, the MSC Lirica, and has done the honours ever since.

“It’s an evening we’ve been waiting many months for,” said Roberto Fusaro, president of MSC Cruises USA.

Ricky Martin at the MSC Seaside christening. Photo Credit: Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

Prior to the christening, an audience of more than 2,500 dignitaries, travel agents, journalists and vendors was entertained by operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli and Latin pop singer Ricky Martin.

Bocelli sang “Ave Maria,” solo at first and then with Voices of Haiti, a children’s choir of 60 Haitian kids that sang this summer at the Teatro del Silenzio concert in Bocelli’s hometown of Lajatico in Italy’s Tuscany region. They also sang “Amazing Grace” together in English.

The emcee of the evening was TV personality, Mario Lopez. Also on hand was Hall of Fame Miami Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino, underscoring MSC’s marketing partnership as the official cruise line of the Dolphins.

MSC announced a charitable partnership with the Andrea Bocelli Foundation to help the impoverished island of Haiti with health, education, environmental help and economic development.

The Seaside is a new class of ship for MSC, it’s fifth since it began building cruise ships for its own fleet in 2003. The ship has an unusually broad, uncovered promenade on Deck 8 that gives a sense of closeness to the ocean.

A pool on the aft of Deck 8 deck is surrounded by loungers and is connected by glass-enclosed elevators to another pool and sun area on Deck 16. Over that pool is a zipline, running from funnel to stern, the longest at sea at 400 feet.

Dan Marino gives a Miami Dolphins helmet to MSC Cruises USA President Roberto Fusaro. Photo Credit: Ivan Sarfatti

The ship’s inaugural 14-night cruise departing Dec. 23 will visit Antigua and Barbuda; the U.S. Virgin Islands; Nassau, Bahamas; Jamaica; the Cayman Islands; and Cozumel, Mexico.

MSC is spending $12 billion to triple its capacity by 2026. “This is what has allowed us to have the tonnage to finally serve the North American market,” Vago said.

Mediterranean Shipping Co., the parent company of MSC, was founded in 1970 by a former ship captain, Gianluigi Aponte, and grew into a global power in the container shipping sector. It entered the cruise business in 1989 by acquiring Naples-based Lauro Lines, with its flagship the Achille Lauro.

At the christening, MSC Seaside was docked at Port Miami’s Terminal B, one terminal away from a massive MSC cargo ship, its decks stacked 10 deep with 2,500 maroon-coloured containers with the yellow MSC logo stamped on the sides.