Carnival Cruise Lines will return to Europe in 2011 if the Americans start to travel again next year.
Carnival based a ship in Europe in 2007 and in Dover last year, offering cruises to the Baltic, but pulled the planned 2009 on the grounds that Americans would not fly to Europe during the economic downturn.
Speaking in New York last week at the naming of the new 3,646-passenger Carnival Dream, president and chief executive officer Gerry Cahill said a return to Europe in 2011 has to be balanced against other markets.
He said: “If we base a ship in Europe, there will be British and European passengers, but the majority will be from the US as that’s where we do most of our marketing. We have to know they will travel.”
In a direct swipe at Royal Caribbean International’s new mega-ship Oasis of the Seas, the world’s biggest cruise ship, Cahill said Carnival would not build bigger than the 130,000-ton Carnival Dream because it likes the flexibility of being able to offer different home ports and ports of call.
He said the cruiseline has developed a successful homeport strategy, positioning ships in 20 US ports, up from four in 1993, so Americans can cruise without the expense of a flight.
Baltimore was a new home port from April this year, and Carnival will have a ship in Charleston in 2010. It will also be offering roundtrip cruises to Alaska from Seattle for the first time next summer, instead of one-way cruises from Vancouver, stripping out the need for a flight.
Cahill admitted 2009 has been “challenging” but said Carnival has fared better than others because it reduced prices without cutting back on marketing or the product.
He said: “Marketing is the engine that drives new people to cruising and makes agents’ phones ring. By not making cuts, we have taken a hit but this has been our opportunity to capture new passengers. People who said they would never cruise with Carnival have come to us because of the price and seen how good our food, service and entertainment is.”
Outlining some of the new features on Carnival Dream, including the water slides, new entertainment venues and expanded kids’ areas, Cahill said: “It is important to innovate, but you have to be careful not to over-invest as that pushes up the ticket price. There has to be a trade-off between innovation and value.”
He said Carnival will carry 3.8 million passengers this year, twice as many as 10 years ago, and more than four million in 2011, when it launches Carnival Magic.
Read more on Carnival Dream at the Cruise Lines blog.