MSC Cruises celebrated the start of the company’s epic yearly world cruise on Friday, January 5, but announced to passengers that the ship will be having to make a big detour due to security problems in the Red Sea.
While much of the attention has been focused on the big container shipping companies (including MSC Group) on rerouting their large container ships, other segments including cruises have also been dealing with security challenges.
MSC Poesia departed Geona Italy at the start of a 121-day world voyage. The security problems however are leaving the ship with a convoluted itinerary while sales manager Gianni Pilato emphasizes that they will still make the majority of the stops. MSC has overall also been able to maintain its Middle East schedule this winter.
MSC Poesia had been scheduled to make Mediterranean port calls before the Suez Canal transit and sailing along Africa's East Coast westward. The itinerary called for a circle of the Atlantic traveling around Africa, a Transatlantic crossing to South America, and through the Caribbean to the USA's East Coast and Canada before returning to Northern Europe, ending the voyage in Germany (Warnemunde-Rostock).
Calls in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia had to be canceled as the liner travels west out of the Mediterranean and south along the west coast of Africa. The itinerary now calls for the ship sailing the Cape of Good Hope and north along the African east coast to make it north to the planned call in Kenya in February. The cruise then loops back in the Indian Ocean making planned stops before transiting the Cape of Good Hope and resuming the route of the original itinerary.
MSC reports that ~2300 passengers boarded the cruise which will visit 50 destinations in 31 countries. The passengers are reported to be mostly Italian, French, German, American, and Chinese, but there is a total of 57 different nationalities aboard the ship.