Cruising embraces NY winter
NEW YORK 15 February – Cruise lines are hiking winter sailings from New York to the Caribbean, with Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 the latest entrant. Today Cunard announced a new series of 14 NY-homeported Caribbean itineraries between 3 October and March 2008. The resurgence of wintertime NY cruising after an absence of several decades was pioneered by Norwegian Cruise Line, which offers voyages aboard the Norwegian Spirit and Norwegian Dawn this winter and will place its newest vessel, the Norwegian Gem, into that market next winter. NCL was followed by Holland America Line with the Noordam, while Royal Caribbean will offer winter sailings out of Port Liberty, New Jersey in 2008. Despite harsh weather conditions, the growing NY trend is being fuelled by demand from drive-to-port customers in the lucrative "Tri-State" source market. RCCL regional vice president Michael Ronan earlier saidthat the increase in NY-homeported cruises has changed the Caribbean deployment equation, with such routes favouring Eastern Caribbean ports because ships travelling down the US Eastern Seaboard have limited range to sail the islands before returning north. “The Freeports of the world, which are very low on the call list, are picking up traffic because of their location,” Ronan explained.
Etiquetas: carnival, cruise lines, cruise market