The drive by most of the lines over recent years has been (generally) to add as much big new tonnage as fast as possible to generate as much income as possible.

Obviously at some stage this has to stop, you can't just keep building for ever, when do we see lines stopping the build build routine and in effect start limiting availbility thus driving fares up.

We all recognise that in real terms cruising is cheaper than it was 15 years ago etc although you seem to get less for it nowadays, but will we see a line (and only as an example say HAL) decide to stop building new ships and focus on quality but charge more - so instead of providing more cheap berths they sell less for more money ? HAL would actually strike me as a good example of a line who could do this.

Again you look at say Oceania - they have 3 and will build 3, do they really think building more except as replacements for the original R ships is sensible when by manging the number of cruises available they could do less but make more ?

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Originally posted by mike sa:

We all recognise that in real terms cruising is cheaper than it was 15 years ago etc although you seem to get less for it nowadays, but will we see a line (and only as an example say HAL) decide to stop building new ships and focus on quality but charge more - so instead of providing more cheap berths they sell less for more money ? HAL would actually strike me as a good example of a line who could do this.

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Only yesterday I read an analysis of HAL's future plans, and they more or less stated the same thing; no plans to build really big ships, and rather than "dump" older ships like the S-Class, the plan is to refurbish and update them. There is a growing market of people who prefer the smaller to mid-sized vessels and will pay more for the luxury of sailing in them.

My wife and I have been Princess loyalist and truthfully, the Grand is as big as we like to go. We are going to try the Crown, are a little uneasy about the crowds. We have been thinking about HAL for our next trip so we will see.

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Originally posted by sunviking82:
I know that I am willing to pay more for a smaller ship with more ammenities on board.
.........................I have no desire to sail on anything larger then 120,000 tons and prefer the 50 - 80 range. If Princess keep building them bigger, HAL may have my business soon enough.

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Sea Trade 2006: It was noted that we are in the late Creteacous period of the megaship. The Oasis is the crest of that wave.

We have not seen it yet but the trend is going to be toward smaller ships with low density. Oceania's new ships are 60k tons but only have 1200 passengers. I believe this is the reason for refurbishing the HAL S and Rotterdam class ships.

interesting thoughts

and the replies such as sunviking seem to give
food for the belief that people want to sail on smaller size of ships, however.. the Grand is in my view BIG, even to say a very BIG ship

now just concentrate on 100+ in GRT size
(and roughly carrying 2500+ pax)
since 96 there have been build 31 ships over a period of 12 years
coming up are untill 2013 in a period of 5 years another 20 (and most of them bigger and bigger
and usually carrying 3000+ pax)

so... no trend visible, if there is any... it would be in the orderbook of shipyards AFTER 2012

and what i like to point out is that medium-sized ships in my old fashioned view carry only 500 or 600 passengers
nowadays it seems that anything such as Oceania's newbuilds with ONE THOUSAND 200 passengers is "called" small

i think this grow and view of people on cruiseships is still absolutely AMAZING, in just one generation
size has almost tripled...
i feel that Oceania's newbuilds are BIG ships
not to mention what al those 100+ ships are..

this is what i found so fascinating on this industry
no compare to aviation and car industries...

so if we talk about more emphasis on medium sized and low density ships (anything between 50-80 k)
i rather think that this is bitter need in order to sell these cabins anyway because the competition is now so fierce and huge they have to come up with something...

but i agree that it is interesting to see what will happen anyway..