By John Pagni, November 2009, updated December 2009
The world’s largest-ever passenger ship and Finland’s biggest-ever single export, Oasis of the Seas aims to prove doubters wrong with a new cruise concept. She departed on her first passenger cruise from Florida in early December.
When Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL) ordered Oasis of the Seas in February 2006, the maritime industry gasped: She would be 42 percent bigger than her predecessors in RCCL’s Freedom Class series. Just like them, she would be built in the southwestern Finnish city of Turku. RCCL and its builder, now STX Europe, had embarked on another trend-setting course.
"This ship was the object of the most extensive design effort ever," emphasises Harri Kulovaara, RCCL executive vice president, "incorporating the latest technology and future IMO safety regulations."
The most visible difference is the open split superstructure aft of the bridge, exposing two of her seven "neighbourhoods", Central Park and Boardwalk, to the elements. The aptly named park has the first garden at sea, landscaped with over 12,000 plants and trees – some over seven metres tall – and tended by the first shipboard gardeners.
In addition to the leisure areas, there are 2,704 staterooms ranging from 18 to 156 square metres (the biggest on a ship) for up to 6,300 passengers plus staff. Put simply, Oasis of the Seas is a floating luxury resort powered by six Wärtsilä 46 diesel engines producing an annual output equivalent to the yearly consumption of the city where she was built.
"Her dimensions enabled the radical open areas, a wider product offering and business effectiveness while making her 15 percent more energy efficient and reducing carbon footprint by 25 percent," says RCCL chairman Richard Fain, who was so confident he doubled the order, adding sister ship Allure of the Seas in April 2007.
At 361 metres long, Oasis is 65 metres longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, and weighs 100,000 tonnes. Boardwalk features the only shipboard carousel. Olympic-class divers perform at the AquaTheater, one of five theatres offering shows every evening. The ship's panoply of paraphernalia offers everything for all ages: surfing, golf, spa, ice skating, a climbing wall, a zip line and gambling, to name a few.
The record price tags of one billion euros each and the economic downturn caused some speculation in the Finnish press about who would carry the can if things went belly-up, as state-owned Finnvera guaranteed 95 percent of the cost earlier in 2009.
Fain responds, "We took a 92 percent forex hedge on signing, which is our normal conservative practice, if not cheap." And the condition was no handover on October 28 without full payment. Fain points out that, unlike airlines flying below capacity, RCCL ships (Oasis is their 22nd, and the 12th from Finland) are full even if fares may be discounted. The company reports bookings for the first quarter of 2010 look good as the "halo effect" of the new ship magnetises customers to the company's brands.
Made in Finland, mainlyEighty percent of the total value, from design to outfitting, was supplied by Finnish-based firms. In addition to the yard’s employees, up to 900 subcontractors meant that at times 3,200 people were beavering away. Altogether an estimated 40,000 are involved in Finland's shipbuilding cluster in various ways. The two vessels provided 12,000 man-years of design and production work. This means when Allure of the Seas departs a year from now, there will be a ghostly silence at the shipyard as no new cruise ship orders have been received since. STX has received a new order that will be filled in Rauma, futher up the coast, but the Turku shipyard is still waiting to see what the future brings. |
Updated 12/7/2009
