Carnival Bad-mouths Oasis of the Seas

 

The chief executive of Carnival cruises has criticised competitor Royal Caribbean’s new ship Oasis of the Seas.

Gerry Cahill made the comments while promoting his company’s new vessel Carnival Dream to the Florida newspaper the St Petersburg Times.

Gerry Cahill, Carnival

 He told the news provider: “Anybody can spend an unlimited amount of money to come up with all sorts of innovations.

However, he said that these can lead to higher costs which will be passed on to passengers.

Oasis of the Seas has gained attention for many of its innovative features, including touch-screen information boards and special on-board mobile phones which allow passengers to stay in touch with each other at all times.

Carnival instead choose to focus on passengers’ experiences, he said, promoting the unique main show on board Carnival Dream, Dancin’ in the Streets, which avoids aping Broadway or Vegas in favour of high-energy entertainment.

 Malcolm Says: Cahill obviously feels threatened my RCI to be bad-mouthing them. Let’s not forget that Carnival had the biggest cruise ship in the world with ‘Destiny’ in 1996 and in 2003 with Cunard’s Queen Mary 2.

 Richard Fain (RCI CEO) once said if you want to be a top cruise line you need a ‘gimmick’. For RCI it is family-friendly floating resorts.  For Carnival it is their ‘Fun Ship’ branding and decor.  For ‘NCL’ it’s ‘Freestyle’. For Cunard it’s is ‘History & Tradition’. (Ask yourself why the QM2 was the first Cunarder with reto-décor)

 By the way, readers who have seen the interior decor of Carnival ships will know that each one is a ghastly ‘gimmick’ (Check out images online if you doubt me).

As for how big is too big. Every time a bigger ship comes along many say “it’s too big” then we get used to the idea and say the next biggest is too big. 90,000 gt (or bigger) is a pretty common size for new ships now and cab be regarded as medium sized, a few years ago that was unthinkable.

I appreciate that ‘Oasis’ will never be to everyones taste.  However, I have been lucky enough to cruise on some small/older ‘classic’ ships and some mega one.  Trust me, both have their advantages and disadvantage.

As for Carnival Dream and a new ‘Dream’ class ship in 2012:

It is interesting how Carnival cruises are clearly no longer competing in the race for size with RCI or NCL.   Carnival are playing it very safe in terms of ship design too. The 130,000 gt ‘Dream’ class is very similar to their ‘Destiny’ class (1996). Buy my reckoning that makes 19 Destiny-class ships, with more to come:

Carnival:
Destiny
Triumph
Victory
Conquest
Glory
Valor
Liberty
Freedom
Splendor
Dream
Magic
Newbuild (2012)

Costa:
Magica
Fortuna
Concordia
Serena
Pacifica
Newbuild (2011)
Newbuild (2012)

There are also 11 Grand-class ships (Princess & P&O) and 11 Vista-class (Carnival, HAL, Costa, P&O & Cunard) across the ‘Carnival’ brands, with more to come.

Carnival will not Compete with RCI’s Oasis

Carnival Corporation’s president and CEO Micky Arison confirmed today that he had no intention of building a bigger ship than rival Royal Caribbean’s 5,400 passenger, 225,282-ton Oasis of the Seas.

(Micky Arison - Photo Forbes)

 

In an interview with BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine at The Travel Convention in Barcelona — a gathering of 1,000 of the U.K.’s most senior travel industry executives — Arison was asked if he had “ship envy” over Oasis of the Seas. The Carnival boss replied: “Queen Mary 2 (150,000 tons) is probably the biggest ship we will ever build. Carnival Dream at 130,000 tons is probably as large as we will build for Carnival. We built a ship of 116,000 tons (Ventura) for P&O Cruises and I have no intention of going bigger. I think at these sizes, we can deliver the right level of service and value.”

Arison also hinted that the biggest mega-ships were too restricted in terms of where they could sail. “We try to build within a size that will give us the most flexibility,” he said. “We like to be able to access ports like Venice and to fit under certain bridges.”

Vine also pushed Arison on the issue of discounting, suggesting that a brawl on P&O’s Ventura last Christmas, much publicised in the U.K. media at the time, was the result of lowering prices to an extent that P&O was attracting “people who shouldn’t be on ships at all.”

But Arison was resolute that his policy of filling ships at any price was not related to the incident. “Each brand makes its own pricing decisions,” he said. “They do what they have to do. Whether someone starts a fight is not an issue of what they earn; it’s more to do with how much beer they’ve consumed and what their personal circumstances are.”

(Courtesy of Cruisecrittic)

Malcolm says:  Cruise line CEO’s seem to change there minds like I change my underwear! Arison is simply presenting a viewpoint which justifies Carnival’s decision to be prudent with their cash in the near future. I think Arison would still love to play the “my ship is bigger than your ship” game with RCI, but does not think a recession is the appropriate time to do it. The ship above was a ‘big ship’ concept Fincantieri was trying to sell Carnival. Now where have I seen that stern before? (Look at the image below!) 

If you doubt me, just remember that Carnival spent at least a few years researching and designing the ‘Pinnacle Project’. I believe this was to be a mega-ship near in size to Oasis. The press later reported that the project was put on the ‘back burner’ because of “its prohibitively high price, due to the dollar/Euro exchange rate”. NOT because of the size of bridges or ports.  If Oasis is a big hit, Carnival will want a slice of that pie too – trust me!