Quick: where’s Banjul? How about Cotonou or Lome? Suddenly, places along the west and east coasts of Africa that are likely to have even veteran travellers doing where in the world? Google searches are being asked to quickly arrange docks and shore excursions for multiple cruise ships.
Sailing the Gulf of Aden, Suez Canal and Red Sea is the easy and crowd-pleasing route to and from Europe from Asia and the Middle East, but the whole area has become a red zone for cruises to steer clear of and the uncertainty is extending into world cruise planning for 2025 and even 2026.
Abidjan, Accra, Luanda, Zanzibar and Cape Town are about to see surges in visits as cruise lines scramble to plot new courses for world cruises and exotic voyages to avoid on-going Middle East conflicts and piracy.
An intriguing example is Seabourn Cruise Line’s 90-Day Grand Africa Voyage that’s a round trip from Barcelona starting Nov. 30, 2024 and ending Feb. 28 2025, with 42 destinations, mostly in Africa. It was originally announced as a trip that headed through the Suez and included Israel, Egypt and Oman.
Now, Seabourn Sojourn will sail down the west coast of Africa, spending time in Cape Town and then up the east coast to the Seychelles Islands, where it reverses and re-traces the African coasts with a completely different set of intriguing stops, including Hell-Ville, Nosy-Be, Madagascar and Bom Bom Island in São Tomé and Principe.
There are extended stays in many ports and overnights in Zanzibar, Victoria, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Walvis Bay, and Casablanca. Seabourn Sojourn’s cruise is being divided into a number of shorter segments for those who want to see Africa, but maybe not three month’s worth.
The situation has two Princess Cruises 2025 worlds adding African ports to their plans. For the Island Princess’ 116-day cruise from North America, the revised routing from February 16 to April 9 will see the ship depart Sydney and sail to Melbourne, Perth and then South Africa instead of heading towards the Middle East.
Key revised calls include Port Louis, Mauritius; Cape Town; Walvis Bay, Namibia; Mindelo, Cape Verde Islands; Madeira and Gibraltar. The cruise will then resume its scheduled Mediterranean itinerary from Valletta, Malta on April 9 with new calls at Volos and Patmos, Greece.
For the Crown Princess’ 113-day world cruise departing Auckland on May 31 and Sydney on June 4, the ship will also bypass the Red Sea and Suez Canal and transit via Africa instead of Asia. A fully revised itinerary is still being finalized.
The changes are raising questions of practicality of cruising to lesser-known African ports. Even the biggest South African ports such as Cape Town and Durban, aren’t up to the challenge, according to a Bloomberg newsletter in March. “Large facilities that should in theory be first in line to capitalize on the trade, are congested and inefficient, and best avoided, if possible,” it reported.
Alternatives such as Walvis Bay in Namibia, Toamasina in Madagascar and Port Louis in Mauritius are benefiting, but their smaller size is a constraint. None of those ports can be described as efficient, Bloomberg adds.
Cape Town and Durban are both in the bottom 10 of a World Bank assessment of 348 container ports. Port Louis isn’t much better, while Walvis Bay and Toamasina rank at 293 and 227 respectively. And that doesn’t even speak to the majority of small African ports, where cruise ships will have to tender guests ashore to a cargo dock.
Notably, none of the new Africa cruise itineraries include Lagos, Nigeria’s capital, which is notoriously congested with cargo shipping and plagued by inefficiency.
At the same time, several African port cities are looking at this as an opportunity to invest in their cruise facilities to capture a larger slice of the cruise market pie. South Africa has an ongoing project to expand Cape Town’s port facilities for large cruise ships.
The current conundrum has several lines deciding to temporarily bow out of the fray.
Norwegian Cruise Line is cancelling published itineraries for the Norwegian Dawn and the Norwegian Sky between October and December, 2024. They appear to be planning to deadhead both ships into position in the Indian Ocean and Middle East . “We have been monitoring the situation in the Red Sea and despite our best hopes that it would de-escalate, we have made the decision to alter published itineraries scheduled to transit through the region,” NCL announced.
MSC Cruises is also changing its 2024-2025 program for the MSC Opera. Scheduled for the Red Sea and Middle East, the cruise ship will now spend the winter season in the Canary Islands. The cruise line announced it will be substituting a program of seven-night itineraries with six ports of call through March,2025.
And Virgin Voyages has decided to start from scratch. The line had already rerouted Resilient Lady after its inaugural season in Australia. Based on the uncertainties, the cruise line has decided to entirely cancel its planned 2024/2025 season in Australia, in part because of the potential problems with the repositioning cruises that would transit the Red Sea. Resilient Lady will now complete her Mediterranean sailing season on October 20, 2024, and sail to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a replacement Caribbean season for the 2024-2025 winter season.
Ultimately, the tragic situation around the Red Sea will be resolved. In the meantime, the surge of interest in African cruising may result in innovative new cruise itineraries and investment in better facilities and experiences ashore.
If nothing else, the detoured cruises to Africa can quickly expand your life list of countries visited.
Story by Wallace Immen, The Cruisington Times
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