South Africa's small but growing cruise industry

The South African cruise industry is a growing one, in comparison to more developed countries it is tiny, with just one ship (sometimes two) that grace the coasts of South Africa once a year between November and April.

Yet there is major growth taking place in the market and observers have pointed out the potential for yet greater expansion of the cruise scene in the country, but this potential is held back by finances, public perception and a monopolization of the industry.

In the heydays of ocean travel there was a passenger ship leaving a South African port several times a week, with vessels sometimes in the same port on the same day. The Union-Castle Line, an iconic shipping company in South African history, operated a strict weekly schedule while Durban and Cape Town were frequented by visiting passenger liners and cruise ships several times a year.

It is with fond nostalgia that many who traveled between South Africa and the UK by ship remember the Union-Castle liners with their lavender hulls and black-topped red funnels, running up and down the coast of Africa. A Union-Castle ship would leave Cape Town every Thursday at 4pm and at the same time a ship would leave Southampton, both bound for the starting point of the other.

This service lasted over a century between 1857 and 1977, but was eventually overcome by the airline industry. It wasn’t until the 1980s that regular passenger service began in South Africa once more, but this time out of Durban on cruises to the islands of the Indian Ocean, while the longer ‘re-location’ cruises between South Africa and Italy were the only regular trans-national trips offered.

This was the birth of South Africa’s cruise market, when aged but august former ocean liners carried South Africans around the Indian Ocean. It started with ships like the Oceanos and Achille Lauro, both former ocean liners converted to cruise duties and operated by Epirotiki Lines and then-StarLauro Cruises respectively. They were pioneers of the early cruise market, forging a place for cruise travel in the imagination of the South African public, but, ironically, they would also become its greatest challenge.

Oceanos was chartered by TFC Tours from the Epiotiki Line and completed a successful charter season in 1988, which led to the ship’s return in 1991, but it was poorly maintained and beneath its pristine exterior, in a dangerous state of disrepair. When the ocean kicked up off the South African coast between East London and Durban on the 4^th of August, the ship began to flood in 30 foot seas (9 meters) and ultimately sank, precipitating a harrowing ordeal for passengers and one of the greatest rescue missions ever undertaken by the South African Air force and Coastguard. The rescue remains today one of the most successful of its kind in history.

But the incident was the undoing of TFC Tours, which suffered a collapse of support from the public. It was also the beginning of Epiotiki Line’s demise and the company went bankrupt soon afterwards.

The sinking of the Oceanos is greatly attributed to the rise of Starlight Cruises, which was the only tour operator left in the country offering regular cruises from Durban. StarLauro was the cruise line that Starlight had partnered with and the Achille Lauro became a popular and familiar site at Durban’s passenger terminal.

The ship had seen cruise seasons in South Africa with TFC in 1986 as well, but the sinking of Oceanos destroyed TFC and the ship was chartered by Starlight Cruises.

But the 1994 cruise season would never commence as the ship caught fire and sank off the coast of Somalia. The incident is not remembered with such angst in SA because there were not many South Africans onboard at the time, on the re-location cruises, according to South African news reports, the vast majority of passengers are foreign. For this reason, Starlight did not suffer the same fate as TFC and was able to recover from the disaster.

Following the Achille Lauro sinking, StarLauro was purchased by the Mediterranean Shipping Company and re-branded as MSC Cruises, a company that has gone on to dominate the cruise market in the Mediterranean. Starlight continued their relationship with the newly-branded cruise line and chartered the MSC Symphony. This graceful 1957-built former ocean liner (pictured) became the real foundation for a regular cruise season in South Africa along with the MSC ships Rhapsody and Monterey.

During this period between 1995 and 2000 the cruise market experienced significant growth and when the aging Symphony was replaced by the Rhapsody permanently, the growing popularity of cruising continued. The latest ship to operate regularly out of Durban is the MSC Sinfonia, a massive ship compared to her predecessors with a passenger capacity of over 2000, compared to the Symphony or Rhapsody, which carried around 700.

The Sinfonia then is a physical representation of the growth in the industry, one which is now large enough to support a huge vessel the likes of which are usually seen in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. According to studies reported in the South African news media, this growth will continue.

A Mitchell Du Plessis Projects study of local cruise tourism found that between 2010 and 2025, the cruise market is expected to double once more, with the current 1100 direct jobs in the industry growing to over 2000. Many local cruise enthusiasts, such as Derek Walker, who runs a local cruise review and opinion Web site, have theorized that the industry may be ripe for another entrant to the market, a competitor to Starlight Cruises, but there are significant challenges in the way of such a development.

The loss of the Oceanos and Achille Lauro brought home for the South African cruising public the dangers implicit to cruising, and this is a fear that Starlight have, ironically, used to their advantage in keeping competition out of the market. In 2007 a small cruise ship called the MV Madagascar was purchased by a local company called Razzmatazz Ocean Cruises and was to be re-named after the company name.

The ship had previously been owned by Indian Ocean Cruises, another local company, but their venture had failed due to what Reuben Goossens, a noted maritime historian calls the “owner’s lack of experience in the passenger shipping industry”. The same outcome awaited Razzmatazz. Although the company’s CEO, Ian Powell, reported robust bookings for the ship, he got held up by the vessel’s owners, who demanded more for her than she was worth on the market, or what had been previously agreed.

This prompted Starlight Cruises to suggest that the ship was not only unseaworthy, but that the cruise operator itself was a scam, an allegation that has never been proven, although the subsequent failure of the venture was the final hammer blow to any competition for Starlight Cruises, as many perceive the industry to be one of oligarchy competition.

The Madagascar/Razzmatazz was not the first ship to disappoint South African cruisers though, there were many other ships that were advertised and failed to arrive or suffered disastrous cruise seasons, such as the Betsy Ross (former Leda), which arrived in Durban in 1988 for a cruise season over the Christmas peak period. The ship suffered a string of problems on its first cruise in South African waters, including a breakdown 20 kilometers from Durban just hours after a departure that was delayed by several hours.

The ship ultimately failed to find a place in South Africa, making the failure of the Madagascar all the more poignant a reminder of the risks involved in operating cruises from South Africa, which is isolated in terms of its geography. A cruise ship needs to relocate from one of the major cruise markets (the Mediterranean being the closest) a journey that takes around three weeks when port calls and island stops are included. The typical cruise season lasts from November to April and the shortest period a new ship could be in South Africa is four months, as this is the minimum charter period that most cruise lines will entertain.

Even a fairly old ship, such as the Symphony, would cost around R15,000,000 to charter in today’s money for one month. The start-up costs are therefore considerable for a four month cruise season (at least R75 million for the charter contract alone, if the positioning cruises are included). The market’s appetite for risk has been undermined by the failure of other cruise operators that have tried, while the South African cruising public have become distrustful of any operator apart from Starlight.

The potential for a South African owned cruise ship is significant, according to both Walker and Goossens, but Starlight Cruises have pointed out in the past to South African news media that the financial feasibility is limited due to the intermittent nature of South Africa’s cruise season. The ship could be relocated north in South Africa’s winter, but that would require a European or Mediterranean cruise market to trust a South African cruise line, which presents an entirely different challenge.