At Sea with Doug Newman

Indications are getting stronger that Orient Lines‘ Marco Polo may be destined for the German market.

A few days ago I heard a rumor – one of many – that the ship had been bought by unidentified Greeks for charter to Transocean Tours.

Today I have a considerably more detailed version of this rumor:

“The ship has been purchased by Global Maritime at a price of $30m
with a bareboat charter back to Spring 08 at a charter rate of $10k
per day
I know little about GM except that they are a successor company to
First Line and are owned by a large Greek ship operator
The vessel is to be chartered to Transocean for five-and-a-half years.
They were also working on a charter to Phoenix Reissen. (sic)“

This comes courtesy of the personal assistant of Carnival’s Senior Cruise Director, John Heald. (If you haven’t seen John’s blog yet, you should take a look!) John likes to give his PA difficult questions about the cruise industry so upon hearing I was trying to find who’d bought the Marco Polo, he decided to torture his poor PA with the question. (Of course for all I know, John’s PA does not exist and he has really been asking Bob Dickinson, which would explain why the questions always get answered…) For this I am quite grateful as this is the most detailed version I have heard yet.

If this does turn out to be true I will be reasonably satisfied as Transocean seems like a good operator and I am sure Marco Polo would be quite successful in the very tradition-minded German market. (In fact, we had a decent number of Germans on when I was aboard two weeks ago and they seemed to be enjoying themselves.)

I also have in mind the fact that Transocean has been operating a short UK-based cruise program with Arielle this year and it would certainly be nice to see this done with Marco Polo in the future (though I have no idea if this year’s program has been a success). I am sure I am not the only Marco Polo fan who would happily book such a cruise.

The mention of Phoenix Reisen is also interesting as I know they had been looking for another ship as well. Some of you may recall that a few months ago there was a very strong rumor that Marco Polo had been sold to Club Cruise, the company that charters Albatros to Phoenix for charter to that company but this seems not to have happened.

All that said, I have no idea who these Global Maritime people are or better yet, what “large Greek ship owner” they are owned by. (First Line is a name new to me as well, I’m afraid.) The only Global Maritime in Greece I can find using Equasis is one Global Maritime Group which turns out, according to Equasis, to have no fleet at all. This firm’s rather rudimentary web site suggests it is not a ship owner but more of a management company that has done work for a lot of Greek cruise lines (many now defunct) as well as companies like Classic International Cruises and, interestingly, Orient Lines (presumably in the pre-NCL era).

Anyhow, only time will tell whether this is true but it certainly seems like there is a good chance it will be given the number of sources this rumor has come from and the fact that it continues to increase in detail.