A new class of smaller Royal Caribbean ships will be ‘amazing, really fantastic’ if they get the go-ahead, the line’s president Michael Bayley said today.
In a press conference on Icon of the Seas – the world’s biggest cruise ship – he answered my question about up a reply he posted on Facebook saying that Royal was working on a new class of smaller vessels.
Sitting alongside Royal Caribbean Group president Jason Liberty, Mr Bayley joked: ‘Damn that Facebook! I’m always getting myself into trouble.’
Turning more serious, he continued: ‘From a brand perspective, we recognise we have two classes of ships – Radiance and Vision – that are doing phenomenally well, they’re beautifully constructed but, like me and others, they’re getting older.
‘We’re obviously concepting thoughts and ideas on how we would ultimately replace those ships with a new class and we’ve done a fair amount of work within the brand in terms of concepting. It has to go through the corporate machine and to the board, it has to go through a process, but we’re quite actively working on trying to figure out what that would be.
‘I can tell you that if we do go through the process – and we get all the approvals – they’re going to be amazing, really fantastic. We’ve got some great ideas. I could tell you a few now but I’m not going to!’
Earlier in the conference, both Mr Bayley and Mr Liberty denied they had been trying to play down the size of Icon which, at 250,000 gross tons, is more than three times as big as Vision of the Seas.
‘We built the biggest, baddest ship on the planet,’ said Mr Liberty, proudly.