In days gone by , Jules Verne ’ s literary heroes managed to travel around the globe in 80 days . To celebrate the end of the pandemic ( hopefully , at least ) in 2023 , the cruise line Royal Caribbean intends to break the record in a different way , offering a 9-month around-theworld luxury cruise . Finland will be one of the countries along the itinerary .
The global Covid-19 pandemic is bad news for everybody ’ s business and health . It has proved to be particularly problematic for cruise lines .
Cruises have been cancelled worldwide for lengthy periods of time . In some cases , inaugural sailings of new cruise ships have been delayed after crew members have shown symptoms of the disease .
Among other cruise lines , Royal Caribbean International volunteered to pause operations on account of the pandemic , in the first instance until mid-September 2020 . Several further pauses followed as the pandemic raged on . In January 2021 , only one of the company ’ s ships was sailing . Another one resumed service in July .
Still , Royal Caribbean – the proud operator of the four largest passenger ships in the world , with also 20 other cruise ships in the fleet plus six additional ships on order – is not giving up . The company is already planning a highly impressive comeback .
A HISTORY OF HUGE SHIPS
Royal Caribbean International was founded in 1968 as Royal Caribbean Cruise Line . The founders were three Norwegian shipping companies : Anders Wilhelmsen &
Company , I . M . Skaugen & Company , and Gotaas Larsen .
Since 1997 , the cruise line is a whollyowned subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Group and is based in Miami in the United States . Known as the world ’ s largest cruise line by revenue and second largest by the number of passengers , Royal Caribbean is also a partial owner of some other cruise lines , such as TUI Cruises .
Royal Caribbean has a long common history with the Finnish maritime industries . The Wärtsilä shipyard in Helsinki built the company ’ s first cruise ship M / S Song of Norway in 1970 . She became the world ’ s first Caribbean cruiser .
Even later on , the Finnish shipyards in Helsinki and Turku have built a large number of giant cruise ships for Royal Caribbean . Amongst them are the five Voyagerclass cruise ships designed to carry more than 3,000 passengers .
At the time of construction , they were the largest ships of their kind in the world . But even larger-sized luxury cruise ships followed .
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