Carnival Launches Chinese Cruise Brand

The focus on China continues to grow.

In London yesterday, Carnival Corp. announced plans to launch a new cruise brand in China, making it the first cruise company to have a multi-ship domestic cruise brand in the Chinese market.

Carnival senior vice president Roger Frizzle told TMR that Carnival executed a memorandum of understanding with CSSC about a year ago, and the project “has been a priority for our business for some time, since China will some day be the largest cruise market in the world.”

“This is a strategic move for our entire company and all our brands. We believe there is a right cruise for everyone and this new domestic Chinese brand will be a very attractive offer for Chinese guest, alongside our other brands that provide a unique offering to our guests,” he said.

Just a week ago, Carnival Cruise Lines confirmed it will sail in China for the first time starting in spring 2017, the latest push by a cruise line into the growing Asian market.

While cruising “is a relatively new vacation experience in China, we believe this collaborative approach with our partners is critical to not only developing the country’s domestic cruise business, but also supporting China’s goal to become one of the world’s leading cruise markets in coming years,” Carnival Corp. global chief operations officer Alan Buckelew said in the press release at the time.

Taking its own advice, Carnival is partnering for its new brand with the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), the largest shipbuilder in China, and the China Investment Corporation (CIC), a wealth fund with over $740 billion in assets.

Carnival will purchase new and existing cruise ships to build the new brand, the company said, declining to reveal further specific details.

In 2016, Carnival Corp. will have six ships home-based in China—the most of any cruise company. Frizzle said the company plans to add two more in 2017, as Carnival Cruise Line and AIDA add their first ships to the region.

The new brand, while run by Carnival Corp., will focus on the growing market of Asian cruisers.

Where China used to be the little brother to the Caribbean and Mediterranean markets in the cruise industry, experts say it is quickly on the way to becoming the largest cruise market in the world, with almost every major cruise line moving—or making plans to move—major ships there.

Costa Cruises and Princess Cruises—two brands under the Carnival Corp. umbrella—already operate in Asia; each will add a ship to China in 2016.

And just this year, Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas relocated from Bayonne, NJ, to Shanghai, something Royal Caribbean president and COO Adam Goldstein called an effort to “accelerate the growth of this vital market.”

While foreign guests are certainly taking advantage of all the region has to offer, the growing demographic of Asian cruisers make moves like this that much more attractive. In 2014, cruise lines hosted 1.4 million Asian guests, up from 774,000 guests in 2012, a number that is expected to grow again by the end of this year.

Like U.S. companies looking to attract the first-time and Millennial cruiser market, cruise lines also are trying to target the under-40 Chinese demographic, who is “much more likely to try cruising,” said Dwain Wall, former CLIA president and current co-president and COO of WorldCruise.cn, a China-based cruise-booking and information website.

Photo: NormanEinstein