Metropolis Cruise, a Hong Kong-based casino cruise player, is down to one ship after selling what was once the pride of the fleet for scrap.
Industry sources said the 17,300-gt Metropolis (built 1972) has been handed over to a cash buyer and is being prepared for its delivery voyage to Alang in north-western India.
Hong Kong Marine Department records show that the ship has been reflagged in St Kitts & Nevis and its name has been shortened to Ropolis, a common practice for scrap-bound vessels.
Its departure will leave only one ship in the Hong Kong casino cruise trade.
Metropolis Cruise was once the dominant player in the overnight casino cruise trade out of Hong Kong, which saw up to a dozen ships loaded with punters steaming out of territorial waters every evening for a night of high-stakes gambling.
It was a marginal, fringe market in the greater scheme of the cruise industry, but brokers and sellers regarded it as a handy place to sell older cruiseships for their trading values, while at the same time removing capacity from the more mainstream cruise sectors.
Metropolis launched in 2007 using the Metropolis, which it frequently promoted as its flagship. At its peak the company operated four ships, but the trade gradually declined over the past decade as a plethora of new land-based casinos opened on nearby Macau.
Alang finally gets cruiseships
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Metropolis, down to two ships, remained as Hong Kong’s last dedicated casino-cruise operator. It is left with only the 15,800-gt Starry Metropolis (built 1976), which continues to sit out the pandemic in lay-up.
Cruiseships have always been popular acquisitions for Indian ship recyclers but they have been almost completely left out of this year’s pandemic purge as cruise majors have opted to sell to EU-approved recycling yards in Turkey.
So far this year, Indian recyclers have only managed to acquire Indian cruise operator Jalesh Cruises’ 70,300-gt cruiseship Karnika (built 1990) through an auction held by the Bombay High Court in late October.
The Karnika arrived off Alang on Monday this week, and on Wednesday was still awaiting beaching.
A second cruiseship, Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line (BPCL)’s 47,300-gt Grand Celebration (built 1987), is expected at Alang in early January, cash buying sources told Tradewinds.
BPCL confirmed last week that the ship had been sold, although it declined to reveal its fate.
The IHS Ships Register lists the Grand Celebration as “to be broken up”, while the ship's automatic identification transponder last showed it to be heading towards the South Atlantic, with Port Louis in Mauritius listed as its next destination.
