CARNIVAL CRUISE LINE CRUISING FOR HALF A CENTURY
In March 2022 Carnival Cruise Line celebrated its 50th anniversary. The youngest of the three largest North American cruise corporations, Carnival calls itself the ‘world’s most popular cruise line’, but its origins are relatively simple. Few people would have predicted the company’s growth, considering its less than auspicious beginnings.
Unlike its two competitors, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean International, which began by building the first of the new purpose-built cruise ships with a vision for the developing industry, Carnival started operating on a shoestring budget, repurposing former liners ill-suited for the modern image of cruising. Yet, through marketing that transformed cruising into a mass market industry, the line grew. By 2020, more than five million passengers a year were sailing with Carnival.
LINER ORIGINS
Entrepreneur Ted Arison entered the cruise industry due to a chance meeting with an engineer working aboard an Israeli ferry operating in the Bahamas cruise market in the mid-1960s. Intrigued by the business, Arison took over the marketing for the ships, launching his first ‘fun ship’ cruises from the then fledgling Port of Miami to Nassau in the Bahamas, and with plans to launch cruises to Jamaica. While that first operation was short-lived, it led to a partnership with Norwegian shipowner Knut Kloster which started Norwegian Cruise Line in the 1960s, before ending in a falling-out between the partners.
Anxious to remain in the cruise industry, Arison turned to the secondhand ship market. and which had been popular 1960s cruise ships before being retired in October 1971. Unable to reach terms with Cunard, Arison instead agreed to buy which Canadian Pacific had withdrawn from service in November 1971.
