Carnival Splendor to join P&O Cruises Australia fleet.
A newbuild ship planned for P&O Cruises Australia will be replaced with Carnival Splendor, which will join the fleet at the end of 2019.
Originally scheduled for delivery in 2019, the newbuild will be deferred and eventually join Carnival Cruise Line “to make the most of the projected growth in the North American market,” the line said in a statement.
P&O Cruises Australia president Sture Myrmell said the decision was based on a market review, from which the line decided a 3,000 passenger vessel was “the right sized ship for the P&O fleet to drive further sustained growth in our market”.
Myrmell also cited other longer term factors which “couldn’t be ignored”.
“It is increasingly apparent that the improvement of cruise ship infrastructure in Australia and across the Pacific is not moving as fast as we had hoped to support a ship the size of the new build we had intended for the fleet in 2019,” he said.
When P&O Cruises announced plans for the new ship just under a year ago, it said the vessel would carry more than 4,200 guests and would be the first cruise ship built specifically for the Australian market.
More in today’s Cruise Weekly.