Could the supply of cruiseship berths outstrip the demand for holidays?
Horror stories were splashed across maritime press front pages recently as an analyst dared to suggest that the cruise industry could succumb to the same dreaded fate as other shipping sectors: over-capacity. Supply of cruise ship berths would outstrip demand for holidays within a couple of years if new vessel orders continued at their heated pace, a report from analysts Ocean Shipping Consultants Ltd said. Predictably, this caused howls of anguish from cruise ship analysts who have confidently predicted that the business was the one shipping sector which could escape the nightmare of oversupply that has pulled the bottom out of the tanker, dry bulk and container markets. Moreover, cruising was not really a shipping business, they said, but a leisure activity. As such it would benefit from the increasing demand seen across all leisure sectors as societies became more affluent and was a product that could be developed to satisfy wider cultural trends. But Ocean Shipping Consultants had
