Carnival UK is under “no pressure” to place new ship orders for the next few years, according to chief executive David Dingle.
The company is taking delivery of Queen Elizabeth for Cunard Line in October following the introduction of Azura for P&O Cruises in April and new small ship Adonia to replace Artemis in May 2011.
Dingle said the economic crisis of 2009 had seen a slowdown in orders for new tonnage across the cruise industry.
Another influencing factor has been the introduction of new stability regulations which apply to all new ships built after January 2009. This means that Carnival has to effectively go back to the drawing board rather than continue with existing platforms that have created families of vessels such as Ventura and Azura, Arcadia and Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth.
“We really have to start from scratch with much more detailed research and development work required,” explained Dingle.
“I am quite comfortable sitting here in a few years time without any more new capacity coming in. This allows us to enhance the business impact with the existing capacity. We have a lot of opportunity to improve back office processes, booking processes and customer relations processes.
“The UK focus will be to strengthen our customer service. That in turn will strengthen the reputation of the brands still further.”
Turning to the closure of the casual cruising Ocean Village brand after the end of the summer, Dingle admitted that “some of those passengers were paying fares which were not appropriate for a commercial organisation which has certain financial targets”.
He said there was an opportunity to up-sell passengers onto more informal ships in the Carnival UK portfolio such as Ventura and Grand Princess, but that they would have to accept ex-UK departures rather than the fly-cruises offered by Ocean Village.
“Some of those passengers, with the greatest respect, will not be appropriate at the prices they are paying,” added Dingle. “There is an affordability issue here but I am absolutely convinced that the majority of people who travel on Ocean Village will be entirely appropriate and we definitely want those.”
There would be an increased focus on online communication and ongoing liaison with travel agents to ensure existing Ocean Village passengers are made to “feel at home” on P&O Cruises and Princess Cruises in particular, he said.
Dingle praised the work of Ocean Village for “opening the eyes of the British cruise industry” to new a concept in cruising.
“It demonstrated that you can transform the core product and transform the market completely,” he said.