In its latest weekly insight for the shipping industry, Clarksons Research has profiled the recovering activity levels in the cruise market.
Steve Gordon, Managing Director of Clarksons Research, commented: “The cruise industry was shipping’s hardest hit sector during the Covid pandemic but is now seeing improving activity levels after a hugely challenging period for cruise operators. Cruise fleet activity, measured by daily ports calls, has edged above pre-Covid-19 levels for the first time in recent weeks.
In 2020, over 90% of the cruise fleet was idle, with port calls activity only recovering to 40% of pre-Covid-19 levels in 2021 and to 87% in 2022, Gordon continued. Latest recovering activity since then has focused on North America and the Caribbean (port callings above pre-Covid-19 levels) while activity in Asia remains 40% down with a pick-up in Chinese activity expected from June.
“Improvements in passenger numbers have lagged due to lower occupancy rates,” Gordon added, but, following reports of robust booking volumes in recent months, we are projecting 30 million passengers across 2023, marginally exceeding 2019 volumes (passenger volumes in 2020 and 2021 averaged only 5m per year).“
According to Clarkson Research there are today 488 cruise vessels with a total of 674,000 berth capacity. Since the start of the pandemic, 40 cruise vessels have been sold for recycling but fleet capacity has begun to grow again and Clarkson Research projects it will be 20% larger than the pre-Covid-19 fleet by start 2025 (729,000 berths vs 614,000 berths).
It also notes that newbuilding investment is now focused on the small luxury cruise market with shipyards in China and Europe increasingly active and potential for new entrants on the operator side.
Meanwhile, the pre-Covid-19 build programme continues to deliver from European yards, but some of the longer-term investment plans for large cruise vessels have been scaled back.
