North American Cruise brands were hoping to grow their European client base, and charge higher fares this year. This was the reason brands such as Carnival Corp and Royal Caribbean International increased their presence in Europe this year. This was termed the great European cruise Migration of 2011, and attracted a good bit of attention in the recent months.
For example, Carnival Corporation had almost twenty per cent of capacity of its North American brands in Europe, as opposed to 17 per cent last year. Royal Caribbean International has eleven ships, which is half their fleet, in Europe in 2011. The number of was eight last year.
However, the demand for cruises has fallen down drastically in Europe. This was partly due to the rising costs of air travel, as also the period of unrest in ports of call that are popular, such as Egypt and Tunisia. In addition to the upheaval in Northern Africa and the Middle East, the disaster in Japan was another cause for lessening demand. The cruise operators are as a reason forced to slash rates considerably so that passengers would be attracted.
Actually the market functioned in a follow the leader kind of way, and all cruise ships went into the market. As a result the market got congested, and prices had to go down. It was not much of a surprise.
Maybe it’s a good time to take that Europe cruise after all.