P&O Cruises in Australia will feature cruises from every Australian mainland state during the recently published 2014-15 programme. Highlights of the programme include the positioning of Pacific Jewel (1990/70,310gt) in Fremantle during 2015 for a series of cruises to Asia, including calls at Bali, Singapore and ports in Brunei, Malaysiaand Vietnam.
Pacific Jewel will also offer round-trip cruises from Adelaide, while fleet mate and sistership Pacific Dawn (1991/70,285gt) will undertake more cruises to Papua New Guinea from Brisbane. For Australia Day (26 January) 2015 the company’s three ships will be together in Sydney Harbour.
Cruising is a big growth industry in Australia, with numbers of passengers rising from 330,000 in 2008 to 700,000 in 2012, although not all of those passengers have used Australia’s home ports, as around 58,000 included in the 2012 figure chose to fly to Europe to cruise, and a further 57,000 cruised in the Caribbean, Alaska and other North American destinations.
Australia has experienced double digit growth in cruise passengers for eight consecutive years, and the current market penetration, at three per cent, is second only to that of North America at 3.3 per cent.
