In a substantial boost to its China capacity, MSC Cruises is going to deploy one of its biggest ships there in May 2018. MSC Splendida joins the smaller MSC Lirica, adding the MSC Yacht Club concept and butler service to its China offerings.
The 2009-built MSC Splendida, at 137,936gt, will become one of the largest ships operating in the region. The vessel can carry up to 4,363 passengers in 1,637 staterooms. Some 76% of accommodations have balconies.
MSC Splendida will join MSC Lirica, which has been serving—to great success, MSC Cruises said—the Chinese market since May. The ship recently moved to Tianjin to capture the North China market during the winter season.
Announcing the news in Beijing on Wednesday, MSC Cruises ceo Gianni Onorato said the ship has been one of the most popular in the fleet with Chinese and other Asian passengers cruising the Mediterranean with MSC.
MSC Splendida will undergo significant drydock enhancement in late 2017, ahead of the China deployment, to further improve and customize it for the market.
MSC Splendida also introduces the MSC Yacht Club to the Chinese market. This exclusive ‘ship-within-a-ship’ concept offers privacy, 24-hour butler service, a dedicated concierge reception and priority boarding and disembarkation.
The move would appear to be a direct competitive response to Dream Cruises’ new Genting Dream, which also offers a luxury ship-within-a ship concept, Dream Mansion, served by butlers. That vessel is scheduled to be delivered next month. It will operate from Guangzhou (Nansha) in southern China.
MSC Splendida’s itinerary details are to come, but MSC Cruises said the ship will visit destinations in China, Japan and Korea.
The news closely follows the opening of MSC Cruises’ Shanghai office with its new management and operations team.
MSC emphasized that Ocean Cay represents a “permanent presence” in the Bahamas, and said it will be used by four ships.
MSC Cruises confirmed it will acquire use of Ocean Cay, an island about 20 miles south of Bimini, for a private cruise ship destination and that it has budgeted $200 million for the project.
MSC said that it will be called Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve. Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie and MSC Cruises Executive Chairman Pierfrancesco Vago signed a 100-year lease agreement in a ceremony on Dec. 16, MSC said.
Among other things, Ocean Cay will have a pier so that guests do not have to tender ashore, which cruise lines must do at some private islands in the Bahamas. MSC plans to open the destination by December 2017, in time for use by the MSC Seaside, a ship entering service in December 2017 that will be based year-round in Miami.
MSC emphasized that Ocean Cay represents a “permanent presence” in the Bahamas, and said it will be used by the MSC Divina, which sails out of Miami, and the Opera and Armonia, which will sail out of Cuba. It expects to hire 240 Bahamians to work there and will open a crew training school in Nassau to provide “local manpower” for MSC ships sailing in the Caribbean.
Plans suggest that the 95-acre island will be the most extensive cruise port in the Caribbean. MSC will build a 2,000-seat amphitheater and many bars and restaurants. The ship and all onboard services, including the casino, will stay open while berthed at Ocean Cay, MSC said.
The island has 11,400 feet of beach front, MSC said, and will accommodate six separate beach districts.
A former sand-extraction station, the island will be planted with more than 80 indigenous Caribbean trees, grasses, flowers and shrubs, such as Jamaica dogwood; red, black and white mangroves; and beach morning glory.
For MSC Yacht Club guests, an exclusive spa and wellness sanctuary with private bungalows and massage huts will be built on the northwest corner of the island.
Various areas of the island will be connected by a network of walking and running paths, and bicycle rentals and other “stress-free” transportation options will be available.
Plans also call for a Bahamian shopping village, a family beach with a kids’ restaurant and play area, a zipline attraction, a lagoon water feature, and a pavilion for weddings and celebrations.
Royal Caribbean International is the latest cruise line to develop a suite class, extending the privileges that come with upper-level stateroom bookings beyond the four walls of the suite itself.
Suite guests now constitute a special class on brands ranging from deluxe Cunard Line and Celebrity Cruises to mass-market players such as Norwegian Cruise Line, MSC Cruises and, soon, Royal Caribbean.
Royal Caribbean president Michael Bayley told travel agents attending the Vacation.com annual conference onboard Oasis of the Seas that Royal is working on a Suite Class package of amenities and will roll it out sometime in 2016.
Bayley said the general idea was to make it an all-inclusive product, though Royal spokesman Harrison Liu said the exact list of all-inclusive elements is still being determined.
Bayley was president of Celebrity Cruises when that line conceived its suite class. The category became operational last month on all Celebrity ships except the Xpedition.
Suites have always been larger, nicer and more expensive than ordinary cruise staterooms. What is new is the effort to make areas outside the suite itself exclusive to suite guests and to generally raise the level of service, value and privilege that go with suites.
Celebrity’s new suite class, for example, includes a 120-seat restaurant, Luminae, reserved exclusively for suite guests.
Those in higher category suites, such as Celebrity suites and above, have exclusive access to Michael’s Club, a lounge that was originally a pub-style venue on Celebrity ships.
And in top quarters — Royal, Penthouse, and Reflection suites — guests get more perks including a free premium beverage package, unlimited specialty dining, free unlimited Internet access and a minibar restocked daily with beer, soda and water.
Suite class on some brands, including Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises, includes segregation from the rest of the ship in an enclave of cabins behind a key-card access point.
The top suites on Celebrity Cruises’ newest ship, the Reflection, also have this feature.
Beth Butzlaff, managing director of cruise at the Virtuoso luxury consortium, said that the spread of suite class is mainly a result of non-luxury cruise lines trying to retain their top-shelf customers.
“I think it’s a trend because all these premium [lines] aren’t trying to pretend to be luxury, but they all have luxury travelers,” Butzlaff said, referring to passengers who are susceptible to pitches from lines higher on the luxury food chain.
Keeping guests loyal by carving out areas of the ship where they can congregate with other luxury customers is an attempt to forestall such defections.
“It’s been successful, from what we can see,” Butzlaff said.
Another factor has been the growing recognition of the revenue brought in by the highest-value passengers on a ship.
The Loft Suite on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas.
“The premiums are finding this type of client is more loyal, they spend more onboard, they obviously book the higher suites and they take more shore excursions, so the investment they’re making is going to pay off,” Butzlaff said.
A third wrinkle is the growth of multi-generational travel and the desire of some customers who would typically go on small, luxury ships to travel with extended families.
Suite classes respond to that. Butzlaff said The Haven or SeaPass, a gold-colored version of a key card now used by Royal Caribbean for suite guests, “accommodates that luxury client [who] is wanting to travel with their families and still have a luxury experience.”
As to whether the addition of suite class perks gives cruise lines cover for raising suite prices, Butzlaff said it wasn’t clear.
“There’s different models for different lines,” she said. “With these suites, there is some comparison with the luxury lines as far as price, but the value is still very strong.”
Travel agents can make lucrative bookings from suite products, so the spread of the suite class concept is a boon for agent commissions. Butzlaff said the suite class idea goes back at least as far as the 2004 introduction of Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2, which resurrected the liner concept and its formal class structure.
Cunard offers Grill Class on its ships, which gives suite customers access or priority seating at its Queen’s Grill and Princess Grill restaurants and associated lounges. On Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, Cunard offers suite guests an outdoor courtyard area for exclusive al fresco dining.
Around the same time, Norwegian began building a separate suite section on its ships that eventually came to be called the Haven. The concept has been picked up by MSC as the MSC Yacht Club starting in 2008 with the launch of its four Fantasia-class ships.
On MSC, the concept includes a separate lounge, pool area, bar, concierge reception area and restaurant, as well as a private entrance to the ship’s spa. Royal Caribbean has built increasingly elaborate suites as its new ships bulked up and passenger counts rose.
The 5,400-passenger Oasis of the Sea and Allure of the Sea offer Royal Loft Suites, duplex accommodations that are a feature of Cunard and some other luxury lines. Already, Royal offers an exclusive concierge lounge to senior-suite guests on most ships and a private area of the pool deck to suite guests beginning with Voyager-class ships and those built afterward.
It also provides private breakfast and lunch seating in specialty restaurants on Voyager- and Freedom-class ships, as well as a separate restaurant on Quantum-class ships, with plans to add them to Oasis-class ships.
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