Holland America Line has announced that its next new cruise ship will be named as Rotterdam instead of Ryndam and arrive slightly later.
Holland America Line Renames Newbuild
The cruise line has announced changes to its next new cruise ship which is arriving in 2021. The currently under construction vessel will no longer be named Ryndam and will instead take on the iconic name Rotterdam. She will be the seventh cruise ship to bear the name and become the new flagship of the fleet.
The new ship’s delivery to Holland America Line has also been pushed back and will now join the fleet on July 30, 2020. The ship was originally scheduled to arrive in May 2021 but the global health crisis has delayed many new cruise ships currently under construction.
Gus Antorcha, Holland America Line’s president, said:
“The first ship for Holland America Line was the original Rotterdam, the company was headquartered in the city of Rotterdam for many years, and the name has been a hallmark throughout our history since 1872 … so clearly the name is powerful and symbolic.”
“With the current Rotterdam leaving the company, we knew we had a unique opportunity to embrace the name as our new flagship and carry on the tradition of having a Rotterdam in our fleet. Seven is a lucky number, and we know she’s going to bring a lot of joy to our guests as she travels across the globe.”
When Rotterdam is delivered from Fincantieri’s Marghera shipyard in Italy, it will spend the summer exploring Northern Europe and the Baltic on roundtrip cruises from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Guests and travel advisors with clients who were booked on the ship’s Premiere Voyage in May and itineraries through July 30 are being contacted with rebooking options.
Cruising aboard Rotterdam VII begins Aug. 1 with the ship’s seven-day Premiere Voyage departing from Trieste, Italy, to Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy, with port calls throughout the Adriatic Sea and southern Italy. The ship sails Aug. 8 from Civitavecchia on a 14-day cruise through the western Mediterranean and on to Amsterdam.
From Aug. 22 through Oct. 10, the ship will sail roundtrip from Amsterdam on three seven-day itineraries to Norway, one 14-day to the Baltic and one 14-day to Norway, Iceland and the British Isles. A trans-Atlantic completes the inaugural Europe season with a 14-day voyage from Amsterdam to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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To accommodate guests booked on cancelled itineraries of Ryndam from May through July, Nieuw Statendam cruise itineraries also will see some changes to match up as much as possible with former Ryndam sailings.
Rotterdam will be the third Pinnacle-class cruise ship and have a guest capacity of 2,668 and will be 99,500 gross tons. The cruise line will announce naming ceremony details at a later date.
