Princess Cruises inks Fincantieri cruise vessel order

The two next-generation 175,000 tonne cruise ships are scheduled for delivery from Fincantieri’s Monfalcone shipyard in late 2023 and spring 2025 and will be the largest ships built so far in Italy. Each will accommodate approximately 4,300 guests.

The two vessels will be based on a next-generation platform design and will be the first Princess Cruises ships to be dual-fuel powered primarily by Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). This announcement follows the initial signing of a memorandum of agreement between the two parties in July 2018.

Giuseppe Bono, CEO of Fincantieri, commented on the announcement: “This result proves, once again, the trust we receive from the market, which allows us to look to the future with ambition. It honors our great work focused on innovation thanks to which we have been able to offer to the client a record-breaking proposal not only in terms of size. Besides we firmly believe that a new class of Princess Cruises’ ships, one of Carnival Group’s top brands, can stem from this promising project. In fact, for Princess Cruises, we have received orders for 21 ships, another unprecedented result in this industry”.

In February 2018, Carnival Corporation (which owns Princess Cruises, AIDA Cruises and eight other major cruising brands) announced it planned to launch seven fully LNG-powered ships between 2018 and 2022. The first, AIDAnova was delivered in late 2018.