Cruise & Maritime's focus on regional UK ports could work

Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) is the name of a new kid on the block on the UK cruise market. The Dartford based company that has acted as general sales agent for Louis and Transocean, will set up a new operation next year and bring the 22,080 gross ton Marco Polo and the 17,600 gross ton Ocean Countess to the British market on year-round basis.

Marco Polo will be based in Tilbury near London, while Ocean Countess that was built in 1976 as Cunard Countess, will operate from a number of ports - Plymouth, Liverpool, Greenock, Leith, Newcastle and Hull.

Obviously, this will be an entry level operation, or a budget market one, if you so prefer. In the US, budget operators disappeared with the collapse of Premier Cruises in the aftermath of 911. Germany has traditionally been the stronghold of the operator that charters ships on contracts of various durations and terms and focuses on just the commercial side of the business.

Given the number and size of new ships that will enter service on the British market next year, CMV's move could be seen as daring. Celebrity Cruises will introduce the 122,000 gross ton Celebrity Eclipse; P&O Cruises their 116,000 gross ton Azura and Cunard Line the 90,000 gross ton Queen Elizabeth.

Well, there will be some deductions as well: Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines will decommission the 43 year old Black Prince in the autumn as will Saga Cruises their one year older Saga Rose. The two Ocean Village ships will migrate to Australia, so all the newcomers are not just net increase in the supply.

But then there are second hand arrivals as well: Saga Pearl II will join the Saga fleet in April and Thomson Cruises will introduce Thomson Dream, the present day Costa Europa the same month. So, prior to the CMV news, four ships were scheduled to leave and five to enter the British cruise market over the next 18 months. Now the number of newcomers has climbed to seven.

CMV say they want to offer a small ship experience and to bring their ships close to where people live, so that they do not need to travel to Southampton or Dover to join their cruise and make the journey in the opposite direction after their holiday is over.

It is probably here that CMV has a niche to captalise on: Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines and to some extent Saga Cruises have been among the very few operators that have sailed from regional UK ports. Thomson Cruises used to do this as well, but they will position all their six ships to the Mediterranean next year and fly passengers from various British airports to join them.

CMV and its German counterparts differ in a few significant ways from their failed US counterparts, such as Premier Cruises or the mid-1990s casualty called Regency Cruises. CMV and its counterparts firstly do not own their ships but they charter them, whereas the US lines mentioned earlier owned their ships too.

While CMV has not as yet published its 2010 itineraries, at least some of its cruises are long ones, in October Marco Polo will sail on a 32-night Caribbean return voyage from Tilbury. Premier and Regency competed head-on on the same seven-night markets as their significantly larger and stronger competitors.

That said, the UK market probably differs from the US one in that in Britain there are at least in relative to the size of the market more long cruises than in the US.

Still, the year 2010 promises to be an interesting one on the UK cruise scene: CMV's arrival will add 27,000 beds to the supply side. It may sound like much, but it is not really: Celebrity Eclipse alone adds 40,000 beds that the industry needs to sell next year.