By Hamza Hendawi
STEPPING into the limelight as a saviour, the owner of the Princessa Victoria basked in glory yesterday as he catalogued to hundreds of shipping executives the woes and future prospects of the cruising market.
The old ladies of the sea, according to Costakis Loizou, president of Louis Cruise Lines, must make way for new ones in order to compete with new arrivals and keep up with the industry’s change of focus.
Loizou’s liner, Princessa Victoria, rescued some 700 passengers and crew on Saturday after another Cyprus-flagged liner, the Romantica, caught fire and began to list south of the island. There were no casualties, but British press reports spoke extensively of scenes of panic during the evacuation.
The rescue operation won praise from William O’Neal, head of the International Maritime Organisation – the world’s top shipping regulatory body – in an address he gave on Monday at the inaugural session of a three- day international shipping conference in Nicosia. Other speakers also praised the rescue operation, but the age of the Romantica came up and was cited as characteristic of the ills plaguing the industry.
The cruise ship was built in Hamburg, Germany, in 1939 and was used as a hospital ship for German troops during World War II.
Hints that the Romantica’s old age might have had something to do with Saturday’s disaster surfaced at a time when the Cyprus Shipping Register came under attack by several speakers who complained of the poor quality of some ships flying the Cyprus flag and the poor training of their crews.
Of the world’s estimated 43,000 vessels, 2,700 fly the Cyprus flag, making it the world’s fifth biggest fleet.
Government officials, however, defended the Cyprus Register and renewed pledges to tighten supervision of Cyprus-flagged ships and administer the fleet more efficiently.
“Our task has been to enhance the reputation of the Cyprus flag and, believe me ladies and gentlemen, we are working very hard at it,” said Klaus Oldendoreff, chairman of NORD, a Limassol-based shipping company, and a pillar of the shipping community on the island.
“The Cyprus shipping industry has matured and obtained international recognition,” he told the conference, Maritime Cyprus 1997, yesterday.
“Cyprus is not the best place in the world to own and operate ships from, but it is certainly one of the best.”
Loizou’s acknowledgment yesterday of the appreciation expressed on Monday for the rescue operation undertaken by the Princessa Victoria won him warm applause from the estimated 1,000 delegates, who applauded him again at the end of his address.
He told the conference that demand for cruises was expected to increase, but that the supply of new berths would be greater. Regional wars and political instability, he added, would continue to have a negative impact on bookings.
A total of seven million people worldwide will take a cruise this year on the 240 cruise ships plying the seas, he said. They will visit more than 500 ports, of which 115 are in the Mediterranean and 145 in northern Europe.
The cruise industry, he said, was growing by about 10 per cent every year, but its share of the global tourism industry was worth only $12 billion or just 2.8 per cent.
Forecasting changes in the industry in the remainder of the 1990s and into the 21st century, Loizou said: “The cruise fleet in the European waters will be replaced by younger tonnage especially as we get closer to 2005 when, due to IMO regulations, older ships that cannot meet the safety standards will disappear from the market.
“We are going to see more activities and sports on board, more casual atmosphere. Cruising has long been an adult activity, but this is about to change especially with Disney coming into the cruise market.”
Loizou also spoke of the arrival on the cruise scene of giant British tour operators Thomson and AirTours and the mergers of some cruise ship operators as evidence of more competition.
Referring to the opening in 1999 of “Greek seas” to European Union flags, he said the high operational costs of Greek cruise ships might be reduced if they were to use other EU flags.
