As part of its fourth quarter 2022 business update, Carnival Corporation has announced it expects to remove three additional ships from its fleet.
Carnival Corporation has announced it expects to remove three additional smaller-less efficient ships from its fleet. Two of these three ships are from Costa Cruises‘ fleet as part of the company’s strategy to right-size the brand in light of the continued closure of cruise operations in China, and Costa’s significant presence there prior to the pause in the company’s guest cruise operations. Once completed in spring 2024, the company’s fleet optimization strategy will have reduced Costa’s capacity so that it approximates the 2019 capacity Costa dedicated outside of Asia to its core markets in Continental Europe.
With the sale of the 3 vessels, the company now expects total capacity growth of 3% for 2023 compared to 2019, at the lower end of the previous guidance range of 3% to 5%. The prudent capacity growth rate includes the benefit that newly delivered ships will represent nearly a quarter of the company’s capacity.
Carnival Corporation has not yet confirmed which ships will be leaving the fleet, but it is rumoured Costa Fortuna and Magica will leave the Costa fleet.
Costa Cruises currently has 8 ships at sea – Costa Fortuna, Costa Pacifica, Costa Deliziosa, Costa Favolosa, Costa Fascinosa, Costa Smeralda, Costa Firenze and Costa Toscana. Costa Firenze will join the Carnival fleet in the spring of 2024 offering sailings from Long Beach. 3 ships – Costa Magica, Serena and Diadema are at the moment not sailing. The oldest ship in the fleet is the 2003 built Costa Fortuna, followed by Costa Magica which was built in 2004. At 92.000 GT, the 2010 built Costa Deliziosa is the smallest ship in the fleet.
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