NCL takes ship out of the Hawaiian cruise game

Tough competition has forced Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) to withdraw a second cruise ship from the saturated market of Hawaiian cruises. The announcement came on Monday and the vessel will be taken out of the market in May.

Come May, NCL will have only one cruise ship sailing around the islands. The removal of the ship will mean that 50 full time positions will be eliminated from the company’s office in Honolulu, cutting the staff in half. President and CEO of NCL, Colin Veitch, said that employees will receive severance packages and retraining.

Hawaii residents from the Pride of Aloha will have the choice of joining either the Pride of America, the remaining NCL ship in Hawaii, or of getting on board one of the company’s international cruises.

According to Veitch, the foreign cruise ship capacity between the West Coast and Hawaii has increased by 500 per cent since 2003. “There’s so much capacity in the market, we’re not generating enough demand to fill both of those ships at a good price,” Veitch said. “Once the Pride of Aloha is withdrawn, we will have an immediately profitable business in Hawaii.”

Still, the decision to withdraw the NCL ship has disappointed U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye. “It is my hope that NCL will be able to sufficiently stabilize their operations into a profitable and robust one ship interisland operation,” Inouye, D-Hawaii, said in a statement. “I will try my best to support them in this regard.”