A Ship Left Piraeus as a Costa and Arrives as Something Else

Costa Fortuna sailed from Piraeus on 4 September and said goodbye to her last Costa guests on 11 September, ending a 23-year career with the Italian line. The 103,000-ton ship is now beginning the process of becoming somebody else’s: she transfers to Margaritaville at Sea, with the handover taking place in Europe before she heads to drydock in Northern Ireland for the conversion work. It is a fairly ordinary piece of fleet housekeeping that happens to close a long chapter.

Fortuna entered service in 2003 as part of the wave of newbuilds that turned Costa into the dominant European brand of the 2000s, and her interiors were themed around the golden age of Italian ocean liners – a design conceit that aged better than most. She spent years on Mediterranean itineraries and a long stretch based in Asia, which is an unusual amount of geographic range for a single hull. Ships of that generation are now at the point where a refit costs enough that transferring them to an operator with a different price point makes more sense than keeping them.

Margaritaville at Sea is the buyer, and the fit is clear enough. The brand runs short, value-focused cruises aimed at a US market that does not need a brand-new ship so much as a big one with plenty of deck space, and a 103,000-ton vessel gives it considerably more capacity than what it has been operating. The Northern Ireland drydock will handle the reflagging, rebranding and interior work needed to turn an Italian-themed Costa ship into something that looks like a Jimmy Buffett song.

For passengers with bookings, transfers like this are usually invisible – the affected sailings were closed out well in advance and Costa’s remaining Mediterranean programme continues on other ships. The wider pattern is more interesting. Several mid-2000s hulls have moved between operators this year as the major lines take delivery of much larger newbuilds, and the result is that value-focused brands are getting the kind of ship that was flagship tonnage twenty years ago. The ship does not disappear. It just changes accent.

Sources: Cruise Industry News, CruiseMapper