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Dear reader,

Once again we can present a thoroughly updated edition of our handbook. The structure of the book is nearly the same as before, the fleet lists, statistics and ancillary texts have grown again. New details are included and a lot of photos were exchanged. As usual the tables show the fleets of the owners/operators as up to date as possible and the statistics provide the figures up to 2023. Ships on order for delivery 2023/24 are included in the relevant parts of the book. The chafter AF is included again.

The number of new ships in Europe was 19 in 2020, but only nine entered service in 2021. 2022 this figure went down to five and 2023 only four new ships are expected. The pandemic is the reason for the lack of new orders. The branch is optimistic to return to passenger figures similar to 2019. A new fact is that many older ships are used as floating hotels for war refugees and asylum seekers all over the year.

In other regions we are watching different development trends. In the Russian fleet no more ships seem to be de-commissioned in spite of the loss of the Western markets due to the Russian agression against the Ukarine. More new ships which were postponed during the pandemic will start service and a few more were newly ordered. In Egypt too, the optimism returns and the number of actice ships could be higher that in many years before. Owners like Viking River Cruises are investing again.  In North America American Cruise Lines will inaugurate the first of 12 new ships this year already. More new ships for the Yangtze River, the biggest river cruisers of the world, were postponed. In Southeast Asia a few new ships delayed by the pandemic can start services this year.

Also in the 16th edition some parts of the book are routine work now but Covid-19 made the work more difficult. Generally, it remains very time consuming to collect the information from every available, more or less reliable, source of information. We took every care in updating the contents but improvements are always possible. As usual we ask for relevant proposals and news about ships and projects are always welcome.

April 2023

The 16th edition 2023 is available now

The price is € 180.00 for the first and € 90.00 for the second and further copies plus postage & packing. The book is also available per WeTransfer in form of PDFs for EUR 360.

Besuchen Sie auch meine deutsche Website <www.flusskreuzfahrtflotte.de>

Attention new / Achtung: The Coastal Cruise Fleet 2022

siehe unter "Service"