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Swan Hellenic sold
Carnival Corporation has announced that it has reached an agreement with Jeffrey Sterling, former chairman of The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company , for the sale of the assets of Swan Hellenic including its trademarks and marketing database.
Terms were not disclosed.
Lord Sterling said, “Through P&O I have been involved with Swan Hellenic for some 25 years and it will give me great pleasure to enable this famous and unique brand of some 50 years to continue”.
The sale is in line with Carnival’s strategy of moving away from smaller niche brands, said David Dingle, MD of Carnival UK, with Lord Sterling having been rumoured as a possible contender for Swan Hellenic for many months.
Sadly, no ship comes with the sale, as Carnival has transferred Minerva II (one of the former Renaissance ships and thus a sister to Pacific Princess and Tahitian Princess) to Princess Cruises, to be renamed Royal Princess.
For many ‘Swannies’ (Swan Hellenic’s regular passengers) the 700-passenger Minerva II was thought too large for such clubbable cruises, with earlier Swan ships smaller.
The first Minerva, which carried just 360 pax, now operates at Explorer II for Abercrombie & Kent and, in March 2008, will commence a long-term charter with Voyages of Discovery/Discovery World Cruises
As Lord Sterling conducts his search for a replacement ship,several senior industry sources have commented on the difficulty of finding a relatively new vessel with an optimum 400 pax capacity, which he is targeting.
Report by Philip Thorniley, TravelMole’s Cruise Industry Correspondent
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