Oceania Cruises has no plans for a new-build ship “at this stage”, according to the line’s senior vice president and managing director.

Speaking to Cruise Trade News, Bernard Carter confirmed that investments and upgrades are “segmented” from each other, adding: “Any individual plan that we have around the R-Class or the O-Class ships doesn’t necessarily relate to any other plans we might have. But, at this stage, there are no plans for a new ship.”

Oceania recently launched the OceaniaNEXT initiative, a $100m investment to upgrade the Regatta, Insignia, Sirena, and Nautica ships, which Carter described as “taking them to the next level; something which is beyond getting a whole new ship”.

“The last of the ships to be ‘re-inspired’ will be Nautica in June 2020, and the whole thing starts with Insignia in late-November/early-December in 2018.

“The project has been years in the planning and the good thing is that at 15-years-old we’re still a young company, but we’ve been able to watch the evolution of the brand in that time,” he explained.

Carter also confirmed that Oceania is studying the possibility of having more ships sailing out of Southampton. “After the success this year – particularly on the 23 May sailing when we had over 600 UK guests – there is confirmation that the UK customer is ready and willing to pay the regular Oceania Cruises prices to sail a Southampton round-trip.

“As such, we’ve taken note of this and we are actively looking at how we further develop that moving forward.”

Again looking to the future, Carter explained that he would “never say never” when asked if there was scope to move into the expedition market.

“Frank Del Rio has actively looked at numerous different options in the market – as any company does when you’re looking at what is working and what isn’t – and all I can say is that at the moment, as far as I know, there are no plans to get into expedition.”