You can count on Norwegian Cruise Line sailing from New Orleans for four to seven more years.
The cruise line signed a four-year berthing agreement with the Port of New Orleans with three one-year options. The agreement will keep at least one Norwegian cruise ship sailing seasonally from New Orleans through 2018 with the ability to extend the agreement through 2021.
Norwegian joins Carnival Cruise Lines in re-upping with the Crescent City. In July, Carnival promised to continue operating two ships year-round from the Port of New Orleans through 2019 and possibly until 2022.
The odd man out is Royal Caribbean International, which is operating the Serenade of the Seas from New Orleans through April, but then is not scheduled to operate from there during the 2015-16 season.
Norwegian, which has operated seasonally from New Orleans since 2003, began weekly Western Caribbean cruises from there on the Norwegian Dawn on Nov. 23. The 2,340-passenger ship sails seven-day itineraries to Cozumel, Belize City, the Honduran island of Roatan and Costa Maya, Mexico. It replaced the slightly smaller Norwegian Spirit.
Norwegian Dawn is homeported at the Julia Street Cruise Terminal. Carnival is based at the Erato Street Cruise Terminal, which underwent a $2.3 million renovation to handle the 3,646-passenger Carnival Dream, the largest ship to ever homeport in New Orleans.
Currently, the Carnival Dream operates seven-day Eastern and Western Caribbean cruises from New Orleans, while the 2,052-guest Carnival Elation sails four- and five-day cruises to Mexico. Carnival’s agreement requires it to base two ships of equal or larger size in New Orleans in future years.
New Orleans handled 987,860 cruise embarkations and disembarkations in 2013, which resulted in $399 million in cruise industry spending in Louisiana, supporting 7,548 jobs and $294 million in personal income, according to an economic impact study by Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
More than 80 percent of those cruise passengers are from outside of Louisiana and spend an average of two nights in New Orleans hotels either before or after their cruise. CLIA ranks New Orleans as the sixth largest cruise port in the U.S.
