Thursday September 18

Your weekly digest is back as we look back on another week of cruise...

Our colleagues at CLIA have been busy crunching numbers and have revealed that the global industry is worth $117 billion, and has seen a growth of 77% in 10 years - what an incredible industry!  Read more here.  Meanwhile it was also revealed this week that spend in UK ports has grown by 10% - great news for our economy and local port communities.  Read more here.


Over at Holland America Line and the ship yard as it builds its new Pinnacle Class ship - they have finally given it a name - Koningsdam (it means King in Dutch!) - read more here.

At Carnival Corporation it has been quite a week for the top team.  Congratulations to David Dingle promoted to Chairman, and similar congratulations to David Noyes promoted to Chief Executive.  Read more here.

Great to see expansion continuing within the river cruise industry - this week we saw the announcement by Ama Waterways of two new ships - AmaPrima and AmaReina both of which will sail on European waterways in 2015: read more here.

Over at MSC Cruises the excitement this week was around MSC Armonia as it became the first of 4 MSC ships to be stretched so that additional rooms and public spaces can be added to the fleet - read more here.

Of course we are now in the final run towards CLIA Cruise Week (starting Sep 27), here Travel Weekly reports on how new agency FlexiCruise are launching ahead of the week's promotional activity - read more here - whilst TTG talks to CLIA UK & Ireland Chair Jo Rzymowska on the importance of Cruise Week - read more here.

And we were delighted to be back in the news this week with our big announcement on Selling Cruise Conference 2015 to be held in Southampton on-board Anthem of the Seas, Britannia and Royal Princess!  An amazing line-up so do save the dates - read more here.

Finally - what better way to end this week's blog than a nod to Princess Cruises who introduce their own beer to Regal Princess this year!  Thirsty work this cruise industry! Read more here.