Cruise ship Celebrity Solstice makes maiden voyage to Hong Kong, its home port for next 5 months; operator urges increased flight capacity
- Vessel arrives at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal with 2,700 guests on board and will use city as one of its two home ports, alongside Singapore, from November to March
- Adrian Au of operator Celebrity Cruises upbeat about using city as base, but says limited flight capacity into Hong Kong weighs on tourists’ minds and budgets
Cruise ship Celebrity Solstice made its maiden voyage to Hong Kong on Thursday after choosing the city to be its home port for the next five months, with its operator calling for increased local flight capacity to boost bookings.
Adrian Au Ka-lun, director of sales and marketing in Asia for operator Celebrity Cruises, said the limited aviation capacity restricted options for visitors flying to the city and increased competition with tourist attractions.
“With the constraints in this flight capacity situation, it makes it harder for people to get to Hong Kong,” Au said, adding it also drove up airfares and made holidays on land more enticing.
“For North Americans to fly all the way to Hong Kong, sometimes the airfare is more expensive than the cruise itself,” he said. “That is when the consumer has a choice to take a land-based holiday somewhere else, so we are not just competing with other cruise lines, we are actually in competition with land-based tourist attractions.”
Au said some sailings for the vessel were almost fully booked, but reservations would further improve if more flights were on offer.
Airlines, including those based out of Hong Kong, have struggled to return to pre-pandemic operating levels following the outbreak of Covid-19.