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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 2022. Ships on order for delivery 2022/23 are included in the relevant parts of the book. Only the chapter AF is postponed.

The number of new ships in Europe was 19 in 2020, but only nine entered service in 2021. 2022 this figure will go down to five and 2023 only a few new ships are expected. The pandemic is the reason for the lack of new orders. Contrary to most seagoing ships many river ships have been able to work a few months in 2020 and 2021. Demand remains high and we are sure that more new ships will be ordered soon.

In other regions we are watching different development trends. In the Russian fleet the downward trend is not yet stopped. More old ships were retired and some newbuilding contracts with Russian shipyards are confirmed and in the 2020 season the first newly build Russian ship is in service. Further new ships were postponed during the pandemic. While a lot of Nile River ships will leave the market, a few new ships are expected now and others will be modernized. Due to the lack of sufficient reliable information this part of he book is not yet updated. In North America one operator is building up his fleet. Many Americans are now booking river cruises at home because they could not travel overseas last year. More new ships for the Yangtze River, the biggest river cruisers of the world, were also postponed. In Southeast Asia the number of luxury vessels on Mekong, Irrawaddy and Ganges is slowly increasing with some delays.

Also in the 15th 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 2022

The 15th edition 2022 is available now

The price is € 160.00 for the first and € 80.00 for the second and further copies plus postage & packing. The book is also available per WeTransfer in form of PDFs for EUR 320.

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

Attention new / Achtung: The Coastal Cruise Fleet 2021

siehe unter "Service"