The first luxury cruise line operating from SriLanka is to be launched shortly, mainly focusing on the Sri Lankan diaspora and the burgeoning Indian middle income class travelers, according to the investing company.
The company which is going to be headquartered in the World Trade Centre will increase its investment to US $ 200 million through next two years and further up to US $ 720 million within a total of five years to increase the fleet ofcruise vessels to five.
According to founder Chairman Sivakumar Sinnarajah, (a transportation sector professional), the first ship which will start sailing by end 2015 will create at least 400 direct employment opportunities both on-shore and on-board for the Lankans.
The company is currently i n negotiations with a European party to purchase the first cruise vessel which is now under charter in Scotland. It was originally owned by Malaysia based cruise line, Star Cruises.
Sweden-based luxury yachts and cruise ships interior designing company, Tillberg Design led by Michal Jackiewicz acts as the project manager for the refurbishing and re-designing of the 50,000 tones, 400 cabin, 5-star plus vessel to be purchased.
However, according to Sinnarajah the company will “potentially” outsource the refurbishing to the local ship builder and repairers will be carried out by Colombo Dockyard PLC at a later stage.
Cruise industry is among the fast growing in the leisure market and the passenger numbers estimated to have grown by 7.2 percent per year since 1990.
“It has been called a ‘recession-proof business’. In other words, when the economy gets week the cruise industry only dips a little.
One of the reasons for this is, when times are good people reward themselves by (traveling in cruises) and when times are bad they might as well go on a cruise to be in a better destination,” said RAC Chief Marketing Officer, Bill Chambers.
According t o Chambers who has over 35 years experience in the industry, the cost of travelling in cruise is far less than travelling by one’s own.
According t o statistics, cruise lines carried 21 million passengers worldwide and the industry estimates passenger numbers will exceed 24 million by 2018 with almost 60 percent of them being North Americans followed by 27 percent Europeans.
Sri Lanka Travel Feneteko