COSTA
CRUISES will send the Costa Mediterranea to Brazil for the
winter 2008-2009 season, forgoing its current Caribbean route out
of Fort Lauderdale. The ship will join the Costa Magica in offering
trips out of Santos, Costa said, but its itineraries have not yet
been determined. Costa said last month that the Mediterranea would
leave Florida to be placed in "a different key core market,
allowing Costa to reinforce its strategic global positions."
A SOUTH
KOREAN COMPANY, STX Group, is now the largest single
shareholder in Aker Yards. STX purchased $800 million of Aker's
shares, giving it 39.2% ownership of the company's 18 shipyards in
eight countries. STX, a holding company with seven affiliated
industrial firms, is parent to STX Shipbuilding, already one of the
world's largest builders of container ships and chemical carriers.
It has no experience with cruise shipbuilding, where Aker is one of
the dominant players, with nine large cruise ships currently in
contract.
DAVID
GIERSDORF resigned as president of Ambassadors
International, effective Dec. 31. Joe Ueberroth, chairman and CEO
of Ambassadors, will assume the position of interim president, the
company said. Nico Corbijn and Diane Moore both were promoted to
executive vice president of Ambassadors Cruise Group. In a
statement, Ueberroth said that Giersdorf was "integral in the
creation of Majestic America Line... and our entry into the
international small-ship, luxury market through Windstar
Cruises."
MAJESTIC
AMERICA LINE, meanwhile, said last week that the Queen of
the West would assume the operation of nine itineraries on the
Empress of the North beginning Nov. 3 so the 223-passenger Empress
of the North can enter a scheduled drydock to complete work on its
propulsion system. The Empress of the North ran aground in Alaska
last May during an Inside Passage sailing and returned to service
this summer. The 142-passenger Queen of
the West, which had no scheduled departures in November or
December, will assume the Empress' roundtrip itineraries from
Portland, Ore., along the Snake and Columbia rivers. Passengers who
cannot be accommodated on the smaller Queen of the West will be
offered cabins on sailings in the spring or a refund of their
purchase. The Empress of the North will return to service on March
22.
THE PORT OF
VANCOUVER said the number of passenger visits from cruise
ships this year was up 14% compared with 2006, to an estimated
count of 960,000. It marks a turnaround for the port, which had
experienced four years of declining passenger volume. The number of
cruise ship sailings to Vancouver was up 8% this year, to 275. The
port said that the increase in passengers is mainly attributed to
the Celebrity Mercury cruise ship, which homeported in Vancouver
for its Alaska season.
Cruise
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