Thursday March 13

With the cruise industry neatly assembled at Cruise Shipping Miami it has been a further week of itineraries and deployment news bringing 2015 even closer.

We do of course have the excitement of Norwegian Escape launching next year, and this week Norwegian announced its year round deployment from Miami - read here - whilst Norwegian Epic will be based year round from Europe and visiting Western Europe, the Canary Islands and Morocco - read here.

Norwegian were also in the news this week when two Israeli guests were denied disembarkation in Tunisia prompting the line to cancel all further calls there - read here.

Staying with Norwegian Cruise Line and Norwegian Escape specifically - the hull design has now been unveiled for what is a great new trend for ship art: read here.

In other cruise sectors this week we saw the announcement from Crystal Cruises that female hostesses will be based on their ships in 2014 & 2015: read here; and in the world of river cruising the purchase by CroisiEurope of the Mekong River Cruise Company - a further sign that this river has tremendous potential for growth.  Read here.

Moving away from itineraries the growth of cruising within the UK was further demonstrated by figures from Cruise Britain that showed that the number of people boarding a cruise ship at a UK port hit 1 million for the first time ever!  Amazing! Read here.

Now over at Cruise Shipping Miami the CEO's of the biggest cruise lines in the world discussed the state of the cruise market, and overall whilst demand keeps rising the overall message is that not enough people know about how fantastic a cruise holiday is - a great opportunity!  Read here.

That global cruise growth is of course also stimulating other industries including ship building: read here.

Finally - the really big news for the week (for us certainly) was the announcement of our keynote Speakers for the Selling Cruise Conference in May - and you can read all about it here.  And if you are able to join us then book now at our dedicated website.

Until next week!