With regards to QV and QE's "ocean liner features", I will never forget how Cunard's marketing implied they were true ocean liners in their early days, "true Cunarders", and "worthy successors" to the likes of QE2 for that matter. Quite a few people were taken in by all that marketing guff back then. Anyone who was onboard QV or QE2 on their tandem (such as my Dad and Auntie on QE2 and a good family friend on QV) and anyone who's seen the photos and videos will know quite how starkly the difference between QV and QE2 was shown at times in those North Atlantic swells. I am glad Cunard eased off on that marketing angle and now markets the ships largely for what they are and what they are good at. QV and QE not crossing the Atlantic particularly often (much like other cruise ships and despite the marketing back when they were new) since their respective "baptisms of fire".
Cunard themselves mentioned said "ocean liner features" back in the day in their own media and in documentaries such as the one made on QE's construction if I recall correctly.
With regards to QM2, I gather she, despite her low passenger density for her size, currently meets demand on the transatlantic. Not to mention she was doing more transatlantics a year in recent years than ever pre-COVID. The transatlantic demographic has also been getting younger which will help her cause, and dare we hope might give her a running mate/replacement in the further off future if the demand is maintained (which I can't see why it wouldn't judging by the numbers of fans of the transatlantic in the younger generations such as mine).
My concerns with QM2 are more immediate in that if both sides of the pond are not vaccinated in a reasonable timeframe (one headline I read said the US may not be vaccinated enough for 3 years!) then a major part of her use and design is null and void for the foreseeable future, and particularly in these increasingly desperate times financially speaking the corporate world will be even more ruthless than normal in order to allow a corporation's core business to survive for as long as possible. The vaccinations really can't come soon enough in so very many ways.
Maybe this is really where her dual purpose nature will shine through however, perhaps mimicking SS Rotterdam?
This is also where any sale of Cunard would surely have to be as a fleet, if it were to happen, in order to be practical? In my opinion, it would be an all or nothing situation as Carnival would need to be clear of Cunard if they got to the point of selling the brand, and the buyer (yet another private equity firm or maybe the Chinese?) would want the whole hog for prestige, fleet flexibility, and getting their money's worth reasons.
Regarding the new Cunard ship, her statistics and design such as having the highest passenger density of the current fleet but being markedly smaller than QM2 and also being yet another HAL design variant leads to my opinion that Cunard is becoming more and more generic within Carnival Corp as the years go on. I think there could be a time when they become like HAL is today, a brand with no ocean liners who's main operation and headquarters are far, far away from their origins both in actual distance and in scope. Why build unique ships when it isn't economically competitive to do so, let alone build a true ocean liner, when you can have fleets of the same class of cruise ships operating under different brands in name only to serve a few very popular cruising destinations around the world. A globalisation of cruising as such. P&O Cruises is also changing according to friends and family and perhaps they'd follow the above path too? But maybe I'm just too cynical, jaded, spoilt by what we experienced on QE2, too snobby, or going down the "1984" rabbit hole too much here. It would be wonderful to be proven wrong, also from a career point of view.
Topic: Ships being sold, orders cancelled, ships scrapped due to COVID-19 (Read 21762 times)
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Feb 03, 2014, 09:34 PM