NCL buy into Luxury

In today’s world of cruising trying to stay ahead of the opposition or even just keeping up means grabbing a big chunk of the market and making sure your competitor does not run away with a Monopoly share of what is out there.

Take P&O, Princess or Cunard for instance, they are not owned individually or part of a three-some as many think, they are owned by Carnival Corparation PLC and help make up the largest Cruise Ship operator in the World. In total they have 11 individually branded names such as Holland America, Seabourn and Ibero as well as the 3 previously mentioned and have over 100 operating ships.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd own 5 different cruise lines, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Pullmantur, Azamara Club Cruises and CDF Croisieres de France.

Now Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) have acquired Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas. Before this NCL only owned 8% of the cruise market and only dealt in Freestyle cruising.

Regent Seven Seas has 3 Luxury style ships and Oceania Cruises has 5 Premium style ships, earlier this year Oceania had been close to sealing a contract for 2 more ships to be built and added to the fleet, there has been no announcement about where this deal now stands.

Clearly NCL are still making up a small portion of the cruise market but in spending over $3 billion to acquire these cruise companies it looks like they are meaning business.

Nothing will change to the style of cruising NCL, Regent and Oceania offer but they are clearly looking at competing more what what is out there.

The common denominator for this NCL buy-in is Apollo management, a private equity firm in America, they have over $22 billion in assets including NCL, Regent and Oceania so what other cruise lines will they or can they pick up?

I would not like to guess, nothing surprises me too much these days but as long as our cruising experience gets better then great.