Costa Cruises: new liners for 3 billion euros

Costa Cruises: new liners for 3 billion euros

Until recently the well-known cruise company Costa Cruises, which has fourteen comfortable ships, was extremely popular among the fans of sea travels. However, a number of recent tragic events significantly undermined the company’s image. It started on January 13, 2012 with the tragic wreckage of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which was among the top ten largest cruise ships in the world. Thirty people were killed and two others are still missing. Next accident took place just a month and a half later on 27 February when a fire broke out on another company’s liner Costa Allegra. There were no victims, but the company's reputation suffered dramatically.

But Costa Concordia administration hopes to get out of the current crisis in the near future. General director in Spain and Portugal Bernardo Echevarria said that Costa Cruises will continue to implement its own plan for construction of new cruise ships, which provides for launching of one ship per year (the plan started in 2000 and should be completed in 2012). In this May a new flagship Costa Fascinosa will make its first voyage. This ship can receive four thousand passengers apart from 1,300 crew members. Given all the past mistakes Costa Fascinosa has been equipped with the latest developments of the world shipbuilding and security industries. Like all other Costa Cruises ships the liner’s interior will have Italian style, because the motto of the cruise company is Italian Style Cruising.

Ilya Kozlovskiy

Date: 01/05/2012