SYDNEY – Australia’s cruising boom will gain extra impetus over the next two years as pent-up demand builds to meet new capacity entering the market.
This is the view of Carnival UK’s CEO David Dingle, who visited Australia briefly this week.
In all, 12 cruise ships from five Carnival Australia brands – Cunard Line, Princess Cruises, P&O Cruises Australia, P&O Cruises World Voyages and the Yachts of Seabourn – will cruise in Australian waters during the current wave season.
The nation’s largest cruise operator, Carnival Australia says a record 190,000 passengers will sail on its ships locally.
Dingle predicts this figure will rise to 300,000 passengers in the 2010-2011 season, and to 350,000 passengers the season after that.
“There is enormous potential in the Australian market,” Dingle said. “We see this market as one of the next big places and we’re really keen to put investment in."
P&O Cruises Australia’s newest superliner Pacific Jewel has begun cruising from her new homeport of Sydney and will be joined next year by the Pacific Pearl, the renamed Ocean Village in the UK.
Dingle said 2009 was “an extraordinary early booking year” in Australia.
The reason, he said, was that people across the world were still spooked by the global financial crisis at this time last year.
Cunard lowered its fares because it wanted to stimulate the booking curve and fill its ships.
“What happened in Australia when we did that – because you didn’t get bitten by the recession here unlike in America and Europe – when we lowered prices here we got this massive rise in business and it went very early.”
Dingle said 2010 has gone back to the 2008 booking curve with higher fares.
“I can live with the booking curve being a little slower than 2009 while we have those fares going through,” he said.
