Cruise control

CRUISE ships are slowing down to help cut soaring fuel bills. Jeremy Gates reports.

David Dingle, chief executive of Carnival UK, the British division of the world’s largest line, says: “We are looking hard at our itineraries to see if we can reduce the distances we sail and the speed at which our ships travel.

“If we do not change the way we operate, our already rising fuel bill will be much higher from 2015, so it is important that we start to grasp this nettle now.”

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The lengthening of the Southampton-New York voyages across the Atlantic Ocean by Queen Mary 2 from six days to seven, has created “a remarkable fuel saving”, says Dingle.

Overall, Carnival achieved a five per cent fuel consumption saving in each of the last two years by slowing its ships.

Presenting Carnival UK’s Cruise Report 2011, Dingle says significant savings had also been achieved by technical innovations in areas like air-conditioning, and by coating the hulls of existing ships in silicon.

Carnival has one other bright idea to cut fuel bills – getting more Britons cruising to the Channel Islands, for shorter voyages or weekend breaks.

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None of the Channel Islands yet has port facilities large enough to allow the superliners to tie up, so passengers often have to queue to get ashore by tender.

Dingle says: “I would love to see a berth where these ships could dock, and then we could watch Guernsey and Jersey develop into the St Thomas or St Maarten of the English Channel.”

Dingle claims the cruise boom, the fastest growing sector of the travel industry, is worth more than £2bn a year to the UK economy. Some 1.62 million Britons booked sea or river cruises in 2010 and the sector now accounts for 11.7 per cent of the overseas package holiday market. Every time a ship turns around in Southampton, he says, it injects £1m into the local economy through shopping and transport.

Cruise lines are picking up bookings because operators are cutting back on capacity for other summer packages or pushing prices to make cruising look great value.

Dingle believes cruising is still being sold too cheaply but the world faces such “economic uncertainty” that cruise lines must offer low prices.

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