PRINCESS celebrated its 50th anniversary cruising across Australia on the weekend, with the arrival of Discovery Princess into Sydney Harbour last week marking the line’s commitment to the region.
Discovery has since departed for a 14-day round-trip New Zealand itinerary, calling into Milford Sound, Dunedin, Picton, Tauranga, and Auckland, before returning to Sydney where she will be home ported until 07 Apr.
By the 2026-2027 season, Royal Princess and Grand Princess will also be home porting in Australia.
The following year, Sapphire Princess will home port in Western Australia.
“We’ve been here for 50 years, so in many ways, we’ve grown as Australia has grown,” Princess Cruises President Gus Antorcha said, speaking exclusively to Cruise Weekly.
“We have wonderful, loyal guests, who enjoy our product and we have demand from that following, so it makes sense for us to deploy ships here – we have year round capacity, and then we have seasonal capacity,” he said.
Built in 2022, the Royal-Class Discovery Princess is the cruise line’s newest ship to ever be home ported out of Australia, and offers local passengers new capacity, hardware and features – a reflection of the importance of the local market to the cruise line, Antorcha said.
In the last couple of years, a number of cruise lines have left Australia, including Disney Cruise Line (CW 10 Aug 2024), Cunard Line (CW 03 Nov 2023) and Virgin Voyages (CW 27 Feb 2024), while local brand P&O Cruises Australia has now been folded into Carnival (CW 04 Jun 2024).
Antorcha conceded Australia has some challenges and that markets have their ups and downs, but he felt positive about the growing potential of the Australian market and its importance to Princess.
“We look forward to continuing our strong partnerships with state and federal governments, supporting the cruise industry’s growth and delivering economic benefits to local communities across Australia,” he said.
Antorcha also noted the line’s growing focus on the wider Asia Pacific region, with a third of the Princess fleet to be based there by 2026-2027.
“We announced earlier this year that we’ll be deploying a second ship to Japan – Southeast Asia is the counter season to Japan – so Australia is poised to see more of our capacity and growth as the region as a whole becomes more important to us,” he said. JHM