TOUR operator P&O Cruises was sailing along on calm seas yesterday after reporting a buoyant trading period for last year.
The company said that all ships in its cruises division were sailing at full capacity and that strong demand was continuing into 1999.
P&O operates two divisions - Princess Cruises in the US and P&O Cruises sailing out of Southampton - shipping almost six million passengers last year.
Princess Cruises operates nine ships, led by the summer launch of the 109,000-ton Grand Princess last year - the largest cruise ship in the world offering 2600 berths.
The introduction of the Grand Princess had led to a 23% increase in capacity but the percentage of cabins booked was still slightly up on the same period last year.
While this led to a ''significant improvement in productivity yield'' overheads were continuing to come down with the introduction of the new ships, said P&O.
Seven-day cruises were proving much more popular than the longer-haul cruise destinations.
The UK division operates three ships, the Star Princess, Arcadia and Victoria. Even though the Canberra was withdrawn from service towards the end of last year and the Victoria had an extended refit, capacity increased by 9% last year compared to 1997.
The 1999 booked revenue and yields were comparable to the same position as last year, the company said.
Strong demand overall was led by the over-50s' passengers, described as the ''post-war baby boomers'', which led to fully booked cabins.
The cruise division is one of the largest areas in P&O's diversified business, accounting for a quarter of its total assets.
It is one of the three-largest cruise ship businesses in the world, along with the US-based Carnival and Royal Caribbean companies.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article