An early Xmas present from RCI.

While I have been away on my holidays the big news to come out in the cruise industry is the announcement that Royal Caribbean’s newest ship, The Anthem of the Seas, will be cruising from Southampton in 2015 and will be replacing Independent of the Seas.

The Anthem will be the sister ship to Quantum of the Seas, below.

This is great news all round and for many reasons.

The Anthem of the Seas will offer some fantastic attractions such as Sky-diving, dodgems and Royal Caribbean’s latest attraction, their Glass Pod. This Glass Pod, similar  looking to a Pod on the London Eye will sit on a mechanical arm that will be able to extend 300 feet over the water.

The ship is set to boost the economy around Southampton by upto £50 million in its first summer, not surprising when the ship will take 4,180 passengers on each sailing.

Interestingly the capacity now being offered out of Southampton from Royal Caribbean is 7 times more than it was 7 years ago when it was just the Legend of the Seas doing the sailings.

The other ship out of Southampton will be the Adventure of the Seas.

I think this is a great move by Royal, Independent of the Seas has been cruising out of Southampton for 5 years now and many loyal customers are looking for a change. Just in time too.

What do you think? How will P&O respond? Can they respond on the back of their new price campaigns? I don’t think they can until they see how it works for them, and if it does work for them.

Anthem of the Seas is due to go on sale in Spring 2014, if you want to be the first to get pricing or even get booked we are taking advanced registrations and at the moment this has been very popular so don’t miss out.

Call me or drop me an e-mail and i can get you added onto the list.