Fred Olsen Cruise Lines has revealed it is looking to place an order for a 600-passenger ship to further grow its “exploration cruises”.
Owner Fred Olsen Jnr said: “We are focused on it and have been working on it for some time – we looked again last year, but the yards are full of 4,000-passenger plus ship orders.”
He said buying a second-hand ship wasn’t a viable option as most of those being disposed of by the larger cruise lines, are still too big at around 2,000 passengers in size.
Olsen Jnr said: “We can continue with the ships that we have now. They are up to the latest legislation, they work well for us. But we need to upgrade the fleet to expand the exploration part of what we do.”
He stressed the line’s interest was in ‘exploration’ – getting closer to a destination, rather than ‘expedition’.
Olsen Jnr revealed that new rib boats – vessels slightly larger than zodiacs, with fibre glass bottoms that carry 12 passengers, were being installed on Black Watch and Boudicca for this summer, to enable the line to offer more immersive excursions for guests. Two will be available on each ship initially, which will then increase to four, and they will also be put on Braemar and Balmorel.
Olsen Junior said: “The marketplace is going towards bigger and bigger ships and we don’t need to go into that same fight. We would rather focus on getting closer to destinations that the larger ships can’t go to, and then, use the ribs to take guests to the places within those destinations that they don’t usually see.
This is the area that we want to exploit. We will then be able to mix important cities like Bergen or Tromso in Norway with everything in between using our smaller ribs.”
He said customers would have to book rib excursions and could do so in advance through travel agents.