PORT EVERGLADES, Florida: Royal Caribbean's new Oasis of the Seas is the largest, widest, tallest, most expensive cruise ship afloat, a cornucopia of amusements aimed at quashing the notion that cruising is a sedentary vacation, said chief executive Richard Fain.

Then he donned swimming trunks, jumped on a boogie board and challenged fellow executives to a contest in one of the Oasis' two FlowRider pools that simulate surfing.

"I've never been a believer in building it big just for size's sake. We build large because we've had so many ideas they simply don't fit in a smaller hull," Fain said.

The $1.4 billion Oasis of the Seas enters service during the industry's worst year in decades, but is so exuberantly excessive that Fain predicts it will be profitable from day one.

Oasis is a floating resort that eclipses the condo towers it sails past at its new home, Port Everglades in southeastern Florida. The 225,282-gross-ton ship has 16 passenger decks and can carry 6,292 passengers plus 2,165 crew.

It has rock-climbing walls, a basketball court, an ice skating rink, a carousel with hand-carved wooden animals, a shopping promenade lined with cafes and bars, cantilevered whirlpools overlooking the sea and a central park with 12,000 live plants and trees.

Zip line

An amphitheater surrounds a deep-diving pool on the stern, where high-divers and synchronized swimmers perform. Passengers can harness themselves onto the "zip line" and soar across the ship above an open-air atrium nine decks high and lined with balconied cabins.

One of its many bars, the Rising Tide, floats up and down between three decks, while a touring company performs the Broadway musical Hairspray in the 1,380-seat theater.

The Oasis, which starts its inaugural voyage on Dec 5, was six years in the making and arrives at a time when cruise lines are cutting rates to fill berths.

Net yields, a measure of revenue generated per bed per day, were down 16 percent during the first nine months of 2009 for the major companies Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, said Rod McLeod, a vacation management consultant who has held senior management posts at all three lines.

"Over the last 20 years, that's the steepest level of year-on-year declines in yields, which is understandable given what's happened in the worldwide economy," said McLeod, now with McLeod/Applebaum Partners in Miami.

The cruise lines are cautiously predicting 2010 will be less awful, with yields down by only 7 or 8 percent.

Generally the further ahead passengers book cruises, the more the lines can charge. The window has begun to widen, with passengers now booking an average of three months ahead, compared with just six weeks in early 2009, McLeod said.

But a wave of new ships ordered during the boom times are now coming on line and that will put pressure on rates, a boon for bargain-hunting passengers but not so much for cruise line earnings.

No 1 cruise line Carnival's newest and biggest ship, the 3,652-passenger Carnival Dream, starts regular cruises to the Caribbean in December out of Florida's Port Canaveral.

Royal Caribbean will launch the Oasis' twin, Allure of the Seas, next December, one of eight new ships due out in 2010 industrywide. Capacity is expected to rise by 7 percent next year, and a little less than that in 2011, before settling.

"No new ships have been ordered for 20 months, and that hasn't occurred in the last 25 years," McLeod said.

New ships tend to attract passengers at the expense of the older ones. Cruise lines are compensating by moving their older ships away from weakening markets like Hawaii and Alaska and into growing ones like Europe and China, "like a giant chess game, playing with boats", he said.

Bookings aboard Oasis have been strong because it offers so much of everything, Royal Caribbean's Fain said.

Seven-night cruises start at $1,049 per person, double occupancy, for an inside cabin and run up to $16,659 per person for the two-story Royal Loft suite, which includes a baby grand piano and private 843-square foot balcony.

"We're getting much higher rates than I certainly would have expected even a year ago. The reception has just been overwhelming. I'm feeling pretty good right now," Fain said.

Reuters

(China Daily 11/30/2009 page11)