Thursday July 17th 

It appears to be the hottest week of the year in the UK - and things are certainly hotting up in the new cruise ship build arena - with the big announcement of the week going to Norwegian Cruise Line who have just ordered two new ships for delivery in 2018 and 2019.  They will each be 4,200 guest ships.  Read more here.

Meanwhile Regent Seven Seas Cruises have started the build on their new 750 guest ship which is due for launch in 2016: read more here.

And with Britannia due for launch next spring - there were further announcements over the on-board product, with the Culinary School targetting 11,000 guests to go through cookery classes each year: read more here.

It is CLIA Cruise Week soon - September 27 to October 5 - and we are planning already and hope that our travel agent partners are too.  Read more here.

Of course it was the ITV programme The Cruise Ship that took headlines at the start of the week.  The documentary follows the inaugural season of Royal Princess and with 3.1 million viewers, a flurry of Twitter activity and a huge increase in traffic to the Princess Cruises website it has certainly put cruising in the public eye: For Travel Weekly reaction read more here.  For the TTG reaction read here.  And here is an interview with one of the stars of the show by Cruise International Magazine: read more here.

We will certainly be watching on Friday night!

Over on the rivers - great to see Avalon launch a brand new river programme in Asia on the Mekong in Vietnam and Cambodia.  Read more here.

Norwegian Cruise Lines made a second announcement this week - the banning of smoking on balconies - read more here; and we never hear enough about the great chairty work undertaken by cruise lines - so great to see the announcement from Carnival of $5 million raised for St Jude Children's Research Hospital.  Read more here.

And we at CLIA were disappointed to learn that Hurtigruten MD - and member of the CLIA UK & Ireland Executive Committee - is to stand down from here role later this year.  We wish her well for the future.  Read more here.

Finally - if you have not read it already then here it is - our July 2014 Informer: read here.

Until next week!