Princess Cruises and Fincantieri have firmed up the final contracts for the construction of two 175,000 gt cruise ships.
They will be the largest ships built thus far in Italy and their deliveries are scheduled from Monfalcone in late 2023 and spring 2025, respectively.
This announcement followed the initial signing of a memorandum of agreement between the two parties in July, 2018.
The vessels will each accommodate around 4,300 guests. They will be the first Princess Cruises ships to be dual-fuel powered primarily by LNG.
“Princess Cruises continues to grow globally – adding new ships to our fleet built by our long-time trusted shipbuilding partner, Fincantieri, who brings decades of expertise to these next-generation cruise ships,” said Jan Swartz, Princess Cruises President. “Even more exciting is that these two ships are being designed to include our MedallionClass platform, powered by OceanMedallion, the most advanced wearable device available within the global hospitality industry.”
Giuseppe Bono, CEO of Fincantieri, added: “This result proves, once again, the trust we receive from the market, which allows us to look to the future with ambition. It honours our great work focused on innovation thanks to which we have been able to offer to the client a record-breaking proposal not only in terms of size. Besides we firmly believe that a new class of Princess Cruises’ ships, one of Carnival Group’s top brands, can stem from this promising project. In fact, for Princess Cruises, we have received orders for 21 ships, another unprecedented result in this industry.”
OceanMedallion delivers personalised service on a large scale through guest/crew interaction, as well as enabling interactive entertainment. Guests are currently experiencing Princess MedallionClass vacations onboard ‘Caribbean Princess’ and ‘Regal Princess’.
By the end of this year, MedallionClass vacations will be activated on three more ships, ‘Royal Princess’, ‘Crown Princess’ and ‘Sky Princess’.
Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and United Nations reported that growth in the number of people cruising between 2004 and 2014 outpaced land-based vacations by over 20% and CLIA projects 30 mill people will take an ocean cruise in 2019, an all-time record.
