Cruise Liner News

Amsterdam took a first step toward banning large cruise liners under broader plans to reduce mass tourism and pollution, officials said on Friday.Once implemented, the measures adopted by the city council would bring the Dutch capital into line with other high-profile European cities, including Barcelona, Dubrovnik and Venice, that have already cut cruise liner numbers or are considering doing so.The council approved the proposed ban on Thursday. "The motivation ... was to reduce the number of tourists…

UK-based offshore vessel operator North Star has awarded a new contract to Great Yarmouth-based shipbuilding Alicat Workboats Ltd for the construction of two new offshore wind daughter craft.The hybrid-propulsion workboats 5 & 6, designed by Chartwell Marine, will be integrated into North Star’s renewable fleet. They will complement the two new SPS 120 CSOVs under construction with Vard. The crafts combine diesel and electric outboard propulsion.Last week, North Star delivered…

Andrea Mather's plans for a long-awaited summer cruise around the Hawaiian islands with her financial analyst husband unraveled after her booking with Norwegian Cruise Line's Pride of America was canceled due to a staffing shortage.It was the second time this year that the 55-year-old homemaker's plan to go on a cruise was scuppered.The cruise industry is sailing in choppy waters yet again as it has to deal with a storm of labor problems, red-hot inflation and recessionary threat…

Sixty-five years after Aristotle Onassis founded Greece's Olympic Airways, another shipping entrepreneur is planning to take to the skies - this time in Italy, where Gianluigi Aponte's MSC has its sights on the successor company to Alitalia.The 81-year-old, known as "the captain" after building his shipping empire from a single vessel, is hoping to forge an air freight and passenger business to dovetail with MSC's sea cargo and cruise operations.But there are big challenges.Alitalia stumbled for years…

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd said on Tuesday it expects to report a net loss until it can resume regular voyages, as the Omicron variant stalls a rebound in a sector ravaged by the pandemic.Cruising demand was slammed by rising COVID-19 cases during the Delta and Omicron waves as operators had to tweak their itineraries halfway through sailings or cancel trips hours before the start.Still, the company said it expects to have positive net income on an adjusted basis for the second half of 2022.In November, the cruise liner forecast a return to profitability in the second half of the year.

Ester Percossi can still hear the screams, feel the cold and see the terror in people's eyes.She is one of the survivors of the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise liner that capsized after hitting rocks just off the coast of the small Italian island of Giglio on Jan. 13, 2012, killing 32 people in one of Europe's worst maritime disasters.Percossi and other survivors have returned to the island to pay tribute to the dead and again thank the islanders who, in the dark and dead of winter…

U.S. cruise liner Royal Caribbean Group said on Friday only passengers with a negative COVID-19 test will be let aboard, after six guests on its Adventure of the Seas cruise ship tested positive during routine testing.The rule will apply to all guests departing on cruises that are five nights or longer, irrespective of their vaccine status, the company said.Of the passengers who tested positive, only one had mild symptoms. Four out of the rest were vaccinated and not traveling together…

When the first cruise ship since the start of the pandemic sailed through the Venice lagoon last month, hundreds of people rallied on land and small boats in protest.A few weeks later, the government seemed to listen, announcing that to defend Venice's ecosystem and heritage, cruise liners would be banned from the lagoon from Aug. 1.The move ended years of political hesitation, apparently putting the demands of residents and culture bodies above those of port workers and the tourist industry."For us it's a big victory…

A Genting Cruise Lines ship on a "cruise to nowhere" has returned to Singapore after a confirmed case of COVID-19 in a passenger, and the nearly 3,000 passengers and crew on board were confined to their cabins through most of Wednesday.The 40-year-old passenger tested positive onboard and the result was confirmed after the person was taken to hospital once the ship docked early on Wednesday, the Singapore Tourism Board said, following the detection of the suspected case."The passenger was identified as a close contact of a confirmed case on land…

Royal Caribbean Group said on Thursday two guests on its cruise liner, Adventure of the Seas, had tested positive for COVID-19.Both guests were not vaccinated and had been quarantined before they disembarked on Thursday in Freeport, The Bahamas, Royal Caribbean International, a unit of the company clarified in a statement.The news comes a week after the company said it would delay the launch of its new cruise liner by nearly a month after eight crew members tested positive for COVID-19.Cruising companies…

Royal Caribbean Group said on Wednesday it would delay the launch of its new cruise liner by nearly a month after eight crew members tested positive for COVID-19, the latest setback in its push to restart the much-awaited U.S. summer trips.Odyssey of the Seas, which was scheduled to sail through the Southern and Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, will now set sail on July 31 instead of July 3. A simulation cruise, originally set for late June, will also be rescheduled.Cruise companies have been cleared in the United States to sail under strict conditions…

Cavotec won a contract by Nidec ASI as part of its $14.5 million deal to provide ShorePower to five cruise liner berths at Malta’s Valletta Grand Harbor. The project is part of a major EU funded initiative by Infrastructure Malta to electrify the entire harbor and reduce portside ship emissions by 90%.Cavotec's ShorePower solution has been designed to meet the specific requirements of the Valletta Port and connect vessels over their entire port length. It includes the mobile cable management system, PowerMove, to provide ship-to-shore connectivity.

Japan's Nippon Yusen subsidiary NYK Cruises Co said on Friday that its luxury cruise ship Asuka II was returning to port after a passenger tested positive for the coronavirus.The ship's 295 passengers and 425 crew members will reach Yokohama, just south of Tokyo, around Saturday noon, an NYK Cruises spokeswoman said.All passengers tested negative prior to the cruise, but the company conducted another round of tests at its boarding reception on Thursday, she said.The infected passenger is stable and recovering in a cabin that has been isolated, NYK said in a statement, adding that only one other person had been in close contact.The ship had been scheduled to stop at Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures and return to port on May 5.In February last year…

When Captain Will Whatley guides a ship through Arctic waters, he is starkly aware of what can go wrong.Double the manpower is needed to navigate. Lookout shifts are kept to just one hour, so sailors don't lose concentration and miss a mass of floating ice. Big icebergs show up on radar, but smaller, truck-sized "bergy bits"—even more dangerous—can be missed, the captain says.The cold can freeze equipment and the earth's magnetic field disrupts compasses. If anything goes wrong…

Twelve crew members of a cruise ship that docked at Piraeus port near Athens on Tuesday tested negative for the novel coronavirus in repeat checks by Greek health authorities, the ship's operator TUI Cruises said.The Mein Shiff 6 cruise ship had departed from Heraklion in Crete on Sunday with all 922 passengers having tested negative before boarding.But sample tests on 150 members out of the ship's total crew of 666, conducted at a land lab, detected 12 COVID-19 infections.Sailing off the island of Milos, the cruise liner made its way back to Piraeus, the country's biggest port, with better access to health services and equipped to deal with any emergency.

A ferry carrying almost 300 people between Finland and Sweden ran aground off an island in the Baltic Sea on Sunday but nobody was hurt, said Viking Line, the company which operates the ship.“The situation is stable.

At least 40 passengers and crew from a luxury cruise liner have tested positive for COVID-19 and the authorities are still trying to trace a number of passengers from two recent Arctic voyages, public health officials in Norway said on Sunday.Four crew members on the MS Roald Amundsen were hospitalized on Friday when the ship arrived at the port of Tromsoe, and later diagnosed with the respiratory illness. Tests showed another 32 of the 158 staff were also infected.While the crew was quarantined on the ship…

As many as 91 crew of an Italian cruise ship docked in the Japanese port of Nagasaki are infected with coronavirus, officials said on Friday, as questions persist over how they might return to their home countries.Authorities have tested about half the vessel’s crew of 623 and are racing to screen the rest. Those who test negative will be repatriated, the government said.The vessel, the Costa Atlantica, was taken into a shipyard in Nagasaki in February for repairs and maintenance after the pandemic prevented its scheduled repairs in China.Earlier this year, more than 700 of its passengers and crew tested positive for the virus on the Diamond Princess cruise liner as it was docked in Yokohama.Nagasaki authorities quarantined the Costa Atlantica on arrival in Japan…

Carnival Corp’s troubled Ruby Princess cruise liner, the biggest single source of coronavirus infections in Australia, docked south of Sydney on Monday to get help for sick crew members requiring urgent medical treatment.The Ruby Princess, now the target of a criminal investigation led by the homicide squad in the state of New South Wales (NSW), has more than 1,000 crew still on board, after passengers disembarked in mid-March without health checks.There have been at least 360 COVID-19 cases…

Australia ordered two cruise ships to leave its waters on Thursday, after a liner that docked in Sydney Harbor last week became the primary source of infection in the country's coronavirus outbreak.Although well below levels elsewhere in the world, the pace of Australia's infections is starting to pick up speed, reaching nearly 2,800 cases and 13 deaths.The government of West Australia state said nobody would be permitted to disembark from the German-operated MV Artania after seven of 800 foreign passengers on board tested positive for the virus…

Greg Butler was rushed to hospital with COVID-19 within days of getting home to self-isolate after being allowed off the Ruby Princess cruise liner in Sydney, one of more than 130 passengers who tested positive in Australia’s worst coronavirus outbreak.One of them, a woman, died earlier this week.The 56-year-old Butler had been holidaying with his partner, Robin Russ, who remains in isolation.“I tested negative and he tested positive,” Russ said over the telephone from the apartment they moved to for quarantine.After disembarking at Sydney Harbour on March 19…

Test results from the individuals suspected to be the first cases of COVID-19 in any South African seaport have all come back negative, Transnet National Ports Authority has confirmed.Earlier this week two vessels, the general cargo vessel MV Corona and the cruise ship AIDAmira, were held off port limits outside the Port of Cape Town. The cruise liner was later allowed to dock but its roughly 1,700 passengers and crew remained onboard pending test results from one suspected COVID-19 case and seven others who had possible contact with him.Captain Dennis Mqadi…

South Africa is holding the cruise liner MV AIDAmira and a cargo vessel off Cape Town after a crew member on board one of the ships showed signs of the coronavirus, national ports operator Transnet said on Tuesday.On Sunday President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of disaster and implemented urgent measures including travel bans to fight the pandemic.As of Tuesday, 85 people in South Africa have tested positive for the coronavirus, up 23 from the previous day and including eight local transmissions, the health ministry said. The local transmissions include a 2-year-old boy.Countries around the world have barred cruise liners from entering their ports…