The 143,000 gross ton newbuilding P&O Cruises has on order in Italy will be 35% more fuel efficient and have 25% more berths than the latest existing ships in the fleet of the Carnival Corp & plc’s UK based contemporary brand, a reflection of much better profitability of such modern ships, a senior Carnival group official said.
“And to give you an example of how this works, this is a P&O ship that we are currently building. The fuel consumption on that ship is 35% more efficient that on the existing fleet, which is a huge cost benefit for us, operating cost, because of the size of the ship is lower, because it's a metric cost that we're kind of per passenger, per bed day cost, it's much lower, that drives down, further drives down cost,” said Howard S. Frank, Vice Chairman, Chief Operating Officer and Member of Executive Committee of the world’s largest cruise shipping group.
The yet unnamed vessel, which will enter service in March 2015, will be based on the same design platform as Royal Princess and Regal Princess of sister company Princess Cruises.
“Twenty-five percent more berths, which I mentioned, more balcony cabins, a richer mix of ships of -- richer mix of these ships that I referred to which get better prices from customers. And the returns on these ships are in the middle teens and we think that's actually conservative,” he continued.
“Well, the reality is that new ships give us much better returns on investment than our existing fleet does today and this is the reason why. So this is the new ships we have scheduled to come into our business between 2013, we have the Royal Princess scheduled at the end of May to be introduced here in Southampton and then '14, '15 and '16,” he told the shareholders’ meeting of the two Carnival holding companies in London last week.
“Why is that important? Well, bigger ships give us better returns. The newer ships have much better technologies, so that they use much less fuel per passenger, per bed, and they have a richer mix of cabins, if you will, than on the existing fleets. So they drive more revenue and that's the reason why. So the average return on these new ships will be far higher than the existing returns we have on the rest of the fleet, which will help, again, to increase our ROI (return on investment),” Frank concluded.
