[Editorial] Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Go To Battle This Month Over New Ships

Whoever thought this up is a genius. Royal Caribbean is currently in the middle of a PR frenzy with the debut of the the Quantum. While not as big as the Oasis and the Allure, one can argue that Quantum has more toys to play with. Either way, its the buzz in the industry right now. Quantum just completed a short PR cruise out of Southampton and is currently on a Transatlantic maiden voyage with a good portion of those guests being travel media. Twitter and the blog-o-sphere are filled with people posting pictures of the new ship. Parties have been rather low-key for now since they are waiting her arrival at her homeport. Once she arrives there in Cape Liberty, she’ll be there for quite some time doing all the inaugural festivities, promotional tours and cruises, and be christened by her Godmother, Kristin Chenoweth. If you’re a Carnival cheerleader or are already sick of the Quantum buzz; it’s only going to get worse next week.

On the other side is Carnival Corp. Their most recent celebration was the Regal Princess naming ceremony in Port Everglades. Now the interesting part is that the Regal first set sail on May 16th and her first Cruise left Venice on May 20th. It may seem odd to wait 9 months to christen the ship. Perhaps part of the wait was so Carnival Corp., the parent company of Princess, are trying to steal some buzz from Quantum currently on her Transatlantic. Earlier this week, Regal set sail on a short 2 night trip prior to her Christening. It afforded the journalists covering the event the opportunity to tour the vessel and post photos of it prior to the events starting. After the christening, it seems everyone that didn’t make it to the Quantum transatlantic, is currently on the Regal Princess right now. Quite a way to steal the spotlight it seems.

Not to be outdone, Carnival also has the official naming ceremony for the 132,500-ton Costa Diadema this week. While we don’t see too much buzz over Costa ships in North America, there’s certainly buzz in Europe about it.

Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. have long been rivals. This seemed to die down a bit in recent year, but it looks like things could be heating up.

Carnival Corp will also have the Britannia in March 2015 and the AIDAprima in October that same year launch. Each quite unique vessels.