Carnival Holds Back Second New Orleans Liner

Citing slow advance bookings, Carnival Corp. has delayed putting a second post-Hurricane Katrina cruise ship through the Port of New Orleans, apparently because of the reluctance of some tourists to venture into the city after the storm, a port spokesman said.

The port currently serves as a homeport for another Carnival ship, Fantasy, along with Norwegian Cruise Lines’ The Sun and Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas. All of the ships make voyages from New Orleans to the Caribbean.

New Orleans had expected to see additional service from the Carnival Triumph in August. But Carnival has now decided that the Triumph will not port in New Orleans until at least April 2008.

Although the current Carnival ship that uses the port –the 2,056-passenger Fantasy- has been leaving New Orleans full, advance bookings have been too slow to bring in the 2,700-passenger Triumph as originally scheduled.

Carnival Triumph was originally scheduled to alternate each week between a Miami departure and a New Orleans departure, but now the ship will offer the Miami departure weekly beginning August 25. The itinerary for that seven-day trip includes four ports of call –Half Moon Cay, a private Bahamian island; Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos Islands; St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was one of the fastest-growing cruise ports in the country, handling 700,000 passengers leaving and arriving in 2004, the last full year prior to the storm. The port has built a third cruise terminal –costing $38 million- that is capable of handling two large ships at once.