Viking Expands Restart of Cruising with Two More Ships from Valletta

Posted on 8 May, 2021 by Spacejunkie2

Viking announced today that it will restart operations in the Mediterranean with new ocean voyages for vaccinated guests beginning this summer, according to a press release

The Viking Venus and Viking Sea will homeport in Valletta and sail two different 11-day roundtrip itineraries in the Mediterranean

Guests on the new Malta & Adriatic Jewels itinerary will overnight in Valletta and then sail to Montenegro and Croatia, calling in Kotor, Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar and Šibenik, before returning to the Maltese archipelago, with a stop in Gozo and finally back to Valletta. Guests on the new Malta & Greek Isles Discovery itinerary will also overnight in Valletta and then sail to Greece, calling in Kalamata, Athens, Santorini, Rhodes and Souda Bay, before returning to Valletta.

The Viking Venus and Viking Sea will sail the itineraries between July and early October 2021.

“We thank the government of Malta for its support and enthusiasm as we continue restarting operations,” said Torstein Hagen, Chairman of Viking. “Malta is a fantastic destination, with ancient history, rich culture and a central location in the Mediterranean. We began calling in Malta in 2016 and look forward to welcoming guests back to some of the most historically significant and naturally beautiful areas of the Med—in both the Maltese archipelago, as well as along the Croatian coast, and around Greek islands this summer.”

Today’s news follows Viking’s recent announcements of Welcome Back ocean voyages in England, Iceland and Bermuda, beginning in May 2021. The company is actively working on developing additional Welcome Back itineraries in a variety of other destinations, with the goal of announcing further 2021 sailings as soon as government approvals are given.

Also, citing the result of strong demand, Viking also announced today it is adding more sailing dates this summer for its Welcome Back voyages around Iceland and Bermuda.

Fincantieri Delivers New Viking Venus

Posted on 15 April, 2021 by Spacejunkie2

Fincantieri has delivered the new Viking Venus to Viking ahead of the ship’s debut in the UK in May.

The 930-guest ship was delivered on Thursday in Ancona.

It’s the seventh in a series of up to 16 930-guest ships being built for the Torstein Hagen-led cruise company.

The Viking Star was delivered in 2015 and was quickly followed by the Viking Sea, Sky, Sun, Orion and Jupiter, with another nine ships set to follow, plus two 378-guest expedition ships from Fincantieri-owned VARD.

Harland & Wolff: New Cruise Refurb Player

Posted on 26 January, 2021 by Spacejunkie2

Harland and Wolff with three Viking cruise ships one in the massive drydock.

Led by new owners InfraStrata, Harland & Wolff is lining up cruise ship drydocks for its two large docks in Belfast. A trio of Viking ships was among customers in 2020.

“It was part of a strategic acquisition,” said John Wood, CEO, InfraStrata. “There are no drydock facilities in the UK for cruise vessels. We have two docks, 556 meters and 335 meters, and they are ideally located for cruise ships in Belfast.”

The new owners have been busy investing in the facility, spending money on new dock gates, power lines and robotic welding equipment as well as other upgrades.

The 85-acre facility is also growing. When the new owners came aboard, there were 65 employees, which has grown to over 200, and a new office is being set up in Miami to better liaison with cruise customers, said Wood.

“We expect (this year) to be busy with cruise ships. Everyone has been out of service for the past nine months. We see the classification dockings ramping up as the ships come back into service,” Wood continued, saying he expects demand to increase in the first and second quarters as the industry stages a staggered return to service.

Financial

What will be a huge boost for the cruise industry will be export credit financing on refurbishment projects, Wood said.

“We have worked closely with the UK government and put a couple schemes together. It’s something the UK government wants to do, is to encourage cruise work, and we’ve got two of the biggest docks in Europe and intend to make Belfast one of the cruise refit centres.”

Plans eventually call for deepening the facility’s 556-meter dock, and so far, cruise customer has been happy to hear about export credit options, meaning they can pay for projects later.

“We’ve seen a real shift in the past six weeks. We’ve gone from cruise lines saying ‘Yeah we’ll look at March or April’ to ‘We’d like to dock between these dates and here are our specifications.’”

That has been based on a mix of an expected return to revenue service and export credit financing.

Wood has also gotten creative, hoping to deliver his customers better value for their refurbishment budgets.

“We are looking at docking three vessels in our big dock at once. This will drastically reduce the cost of the drydock for the owners and bring in the OEMs at the same time (for three ships),” he explained. “There are big cost savings there. We’re also working up another proposal around that concept of having two large vessels side-by-side in one dock.”

Excerpt from Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine: Winter 2020-2021