Dreamliner Cruises - a brand and subsidiary owned by Royalton Investment Holding (UK), is taking over the MS Berlin cruise ship from FTI Cruises (Germany) with immediate effect and is scheduling a complete drydock renovation. Following the refurbishment, the Malta-flagged liner will be renamed to "Dream Goddess".
Royalton Investment is a holding company with operations in Europe and Asia (Middle East), with assets in industries like Yachting/Cruising, Real Estate, Hospitality/Travel, Technology.
The Valletta Malta-based holding, which owns the world's largest fleet of superyachts, is expanding its fleet in what is today a rapidly growing ship cruise segment via the purchase of the vessel MS Berlin from FTI Group. FTI Cruises departures in September-October 2020 have already been canceled.
In late-July 2020, FTI Group (Bavarian travel company, shipowner) shut down its cruise branch "FTI Cruises". In addition to FTI Cruises, FTI Group's measures also affected the flight portal Fly.de (2005-founded), FTI Touristik GmbH (tour operator, operations in 120+ countries), and LAL Sprachreisen (LAL Language Travel / "Love A Language", worldwide tours themed on learning English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Japanese).
Overall, FTI Group wanted to reduce staff costs by ~20% to cope with the pandemic. The 40-year-old MS Berlin was last refurbished in 2017.