British cruise line Cruise and Maritime Voyages has been placed into receivership after failing to find financing to overcome the effect of the coronavirus pandemic. The cruise line, aimed mainly at the British market, has not sailed since mid-March.
Cruise & Maritime Voyages is the third cruise line to go underwater in the past month.
Sweden’s only cruise line Birka Cruises was shut down
earlier this month with the loss of over 500 jobs. In late June, Spanish Cruise line Pullmantur filed for bankruptcy and its three-ship fleet, including the MS Sovereign, formerly Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas, once the world’s largest cruise ship, was sent to a scrapyard in Turkey.
In a statement on its website, Cruise & Maritime Voyages said: “We are sorry to inform you that South Quay Travel Limited (“SQTL”) – which traded under the name Cruise & Maritime Voyages – was placed into administration on 20 July 2020.
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Global pandemic of seismic proportions
In a statement carried by the British newspaper, The Sun, Paul Williams, appointed receiver Paul Williams said: “The travel, tourism and wider hospitality industry has been engulfed with a devastating and unprecedented global pandemic of seismic proportions impacting very hard on CMV’s once thriving cruise business compounded by last week’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advisory against cruise travel.
“Unfortunately, despite the collective very best efforts and being very close to securing the long-term finance needed, CMV was unable to conclude the funding within the timescales required which has led to the administration of the business.”
Cruise and Maritime Voyages employed some 4,000 people with Williams saying the bankruptcy was “likely to result in the redundancy of the UK employees and an uncertain future for those employees in the wider group.”
Cruise and Maritime Voyage The Carnival Cruise connection
Founded in 2009, Cruise & Maritime Voyages had six ships in its fleet including the MV Astoria, the world’s oldest passenger ship still in operation in deep waters, which had been scheduled to continue sailing until October 2020.
Originally launched in 1946 as the Stockholm, in 1956 she famously collided with the SS Andrea Doria off the coast of the island of Nantucket south of Cape Cod with the loss of 46 lives.
Cruise & Maritime Voyages had been due to take on two ship’s owned by Carnival Corporation’s P&O Australia in 2021, the Pacific Aria and the Pacific Dawn.
Another of its ships, the MV Magellan started out as the Carnival Holiday, launched in 1985, while the largest ship in the CMV fleet with 1,400 berths, entered service in 1989 as Princess Cruises Star Princess.
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