A symbol of the difficult situation of the once so successful industry is a scrapping port in Turkey: In the past two years, many cruise ships have been scrapped there, some of which were still completely intact.

In the Turkish port city of Aliaga, about 50 kilometers north of Izmir, old cargo and container ships are normally scrapped for scrap metal extraction. But since 2020 everything is different here. In the meantime, large cruise ships also land in the scrapping port again and again. As the industry portal “Cruise Industry News” reports, the “Carnival Sensation” of the US shipping company Carnival Cruise Line was stranded in Aliaga for demolition at the beginning of April 2022. The ship, built in 1993, was last modernized and expanded in 2009.

More and more cruise ships are being scrapped

In 2020, five other cruise ships from the same shipping company started their last trip to Aliaga. These include “Carnival Fantasy”, which, according to a report by the Australian travel portal “Traveller”, had undergone a comprehensive overhaul just a year earlier.

According to Cruise Industry News, in 2020 a total of 13 cruise ships were sold to Aliaga or other dismantling ports, such as Alang in India, for scrapping. In 2021 there were nine cruise ships, in 2022 six so far. For comparison: in 2019, i.e. before the outbreak of the corona pandemic, there were only two. In 2016, not a single cruise ship was scrapped anywhere in the world.

Aliaga Ship Graveyard is booming

While the cruise industry is struggling with severe financial losses, the ship recycling port in Alagia is experiencing a real boom. According to “Traveller”, sales in 2020 increased by 30 percent compared to 2019 – partly because cruise ships are now also being scrapped there. It takes six to nine months to completely dismantle a large cruise ship such as the “Carnival Sensation”. The parts are said to be all recycled.

And although more and more cruise ships find their last resting place in Aliaga and other ports, the construction boom in the industry does not stop. According to another report by Cruise Industry News, 75 new cruise ships are planned by 2027 alone. The total order volume is therefore almost 45 billion euros, each ship offers space for 2256 guests on average. After all, almost a third of it is to be operated with liquid gas LNG.