News that Norwegian Cruise Line will deploy its upcoming Norwegian Bliss in Alaska for its 2018 inaugural season is bittersweet. While it's fantastic to see a brand new ship homeport on the West Coast for the summer from Seattle, Washington, it's also disappointing to see that it will not be based somewhere in California during the following winter.
It was recently announced that it would instead head to Miami, Florida come November 17, 2018, making it one more new ship saturating Florida's homeports and the Caribbean Sea. Should its first season prove popular enough, the Norwegian Bliss will then presumably alternate between Alaska in the summer and Miami in the winter.
But it's really a missed opportunity to not homeport a new cruise ship on the West Coast year-round. Surely, Norwegian did the math and came to the conclusion that more money was to be made departing from the East Coast, but a winter season sailing from Los Angeles or San Diego would have been a refreshing change of pace that it was easily in a position to at least try.
[READMORE]READ MORE: What to Expect from the Norwegian Bliss as It Begins Construction[/READMORE]
Florida is no doubt as popular as it is as a homeport state because it features all the latest ships. That's a major draw, perhaps more so than the embarkation and disembarkation ports themselves. If Royal Caribbean International decided to position its Harmony of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, on the West Coast alternatively, for example, cruise travelers would certainly follow it and thus increase cruise traffic substantially from California in the process.
In fact, San Diego as a cruise hub is on the rebound as the Mexican Riviera picks up in popularity again. Cruise Industry News is reporting that America's Finest City saw only about 69 calls last year but is expecting a total of 90 this season, and the hope is for numbers to soon resemble earlier high times.
Adam Deaton, senior account trade representative at the Port of San Diego was quoted as saying, "We had over 200 calls back in 2009-2010 and then it flattened out by 2013 to 79 calls. … We are going to see that 100-ship mark again. It's hard to say how quickly it will come back but that is the first clue."
[READMORE]READ MORE: The Cruise Return of the Mexican Riviera[/READMORE]
Norwegian Cruise Line could have been the company to make it happen too if they had opted to leave from California over Florida, but alas it will now have to be up to another brand. For now, Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line and Princess Cruises frequent the ports of Long Beach, San Diego and San Pedro, but older ships make the runs.
Where is that shiny new ship to mix things up?
Carnival is expanding its operations in Long Beach to soon welcome more and larger existing vessels, but seeing its next Carnival Horizon based there when it launches in 2018 would be especially exciting.
I'm convinced that if they build it, they will come, or, in this case, if the new ship arrives, so will the high passenger numbers to the West Coast finally. It's now just a matter of time to see what line, if any, will take the chance. Here's hoping!
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