India will soon Become the ‘big source cruise market’ Says Costa Cruise From Mumbai to Cochin & Maldives

Costa Cruise has shown interest in creating a cruise market in India. For those who are not familiar with Costa Cruise, it is an Italian based international cruise company. It is the only cruise company to provide regular cruise route between Mumbai and Cochin, Cochin and Maldives and Maldives and Mumbai. As of 2019, it has completed its third season in India.

On April 2019, Costa Luminosa on its itinerary of 109 nights cruise trip throughout the world, accommodating 3000 guests in 1130 cabins, docked in Mumbai. This ship is also called as the ‘Ship of Lights’, thanks to 120 Murano chandeliers in it. After completing this tour, it moves on to Venice to continue the East Mediterranean itinerary covering Greek Isles up to November. Costa Cruise is one of the largest cruise deployment service providers in Europe providing itineraries covering many parts of the world.

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This is not a one-time stop for Costa Luminosa. In December 2018, the ship was homeported in Mumbai docks for almost four months.  Costa neoRiviera accommodated more than 10,000 Indians on a luxury trip from Mumbai to Cochin for four nights and an international itinerary from Maldives to Mumbai for seven nights. This shows the demand for cruise itineraries in India. The travelers were corporate incentive groups, cruise wedding, large families and many individual travelers. From the winter of 2019, Costa neo Riviera will be replaced by a larger vessel to accommodate the growing demand in cruise vacation among Indians.

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During an interview, the Chairman of Mumbai Port Trust, Shri Sanjay Bhatia mentioned that Costa Cruise is one of the premium clients of Mumbai Port. He also mentioned that the company is helping to building a larger cruise market in India. With this, the Mumbai Port will inaugurate a state-of-the-art cruise terminal in Nov-Dec 2019. Bhatia mentioned that in the future, India would be able to accommodate many number of cruises and even cruises larger than Costa ships.

Representative of Costa Cruise, Lotus Destination’s Managing Director, Nalini Gupta mentioned that Costa Cruise is seeing a grand increase in the number of passengers in India and has confidence that the country is a big market for cruises.