Are The Americans Taking Control of World Cruising?
The news that the Carlyle Group of Washington has taken control of Brazil’s CVC Cruises leads one to sit back and wonder what is happening to the control of the cruise market. At one time, Europeans effectively controlled the cruise industry in North America, with British, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek, Italian and Swedish shipowners all running cruise businesses from local offices in New York or Miami with a titular US president. The first move away from this was the formation of Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972, after the Arisons and Klosters parted ways, with Kloster having owned the ships and Arison having run them. Set up as an independent, Carnival has come a long way from a one-ship operation to to-day, where it owns 95. According to Ryan Wahlstrom’s Cruise Market Watch web site, Carnival now controls 55% of the North American market and 52% of the rest of the world, with Royal Caribbean having 27% and 22% respectively. If we ignore for the moment Apollo Corporation and its interests in
