| Confirmed: RCI developing new ship class

ROYAL Caribbean International (RCI) Chief Executive Michael Bayley (pictured) has confirmed the veracity of swirling rumours the cruise line is currently working on a new class of ships to follow its high-profile Icon-class.

Bayley said the next phase of RCI’s ship development plan, currently in preliminary plan stages, will be to ultimately replace its ageing Vision- and Radiance-class vessels with a revamped model.

“They are beautiful ships and beautifully constructed but like me and others they are getting older so we are now concepting thoughts and ideas about how we are going to replace those ships with a new class for Royal Caribbean,” he added.

“We have already done a fair amount of work within the brand in terms of the concepting process, but these still have to go through the corporate machine, through the board and through a process, but we are actively working on trying to figure out what that would look like”.

Bayley added from what he has seen from the early planning phases, the new class of RCI ships “look fantastic”.

“We really do have some great ideas on the table and I could tell you a few now but I’m not going to,” he quipped.

At a later immersion session, RCI Chief Product and Innovation Officer Jay Schneider declined to be drawn on the exact size of the new class, but confirmed it won’t be as large as the Icon class.

“The new class of ships will not be the world’s largest class of ship, we are starting smaller and have not put a size to it yet but it will definitely be a ‘mic drop ship’ [like Icon],” Schneider noted.

“It will take the same attention to detail [of Icon], that same level of focus on experience to achieve something like this but just at a different scale,” he added.

RCI has two more Icon-class ships on order to launch next year (Star of the Seas) and in 2026.

Schneider said the name of the third vessel has been chosen (CW 16 Jan), but has not yet been released to the public. AB