The launch of Scenic Eclipse, which is touted as world's most luxurious cruise ship and the world’s first “discovery yacht”, has been pushed back to 15 August 2019.
Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours announced last July a five-month delay until January 2019, although that date was later amended to 13 April.
The 228-guest Scenic Eclipse will now be a year late as the company announced it would take delivery of the new luxury vessel in August 2019.
It is reported the shipyard has faced financial troubles, resulting in workers not having been paid in full since last August, triggering strikes and labour shortages.
Scenic said the net result was “months” of lost production. To mitigate the delay, the line says it has drafted in cruise ship specialists from Finland, Italy, the UK and Norway to bring efforts along.
According to a statement, shipyard workers have not been paid full salaries since August last year, which has led to strikes and other disruptions.
Scenic will provide full refunds for the cost of guests’ Scenic Eclipse cruise and a future credit to the value of 25 per cent of the cost for a rebooked cruise.
A spokesperson said: “We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience these delays to the launch of Scenic Eclipse have caused our guests. As a company we have done everything possible to complete the ship within the time limits that were set previously, but a series of events that are outside our control have put us in a position where we must delay.”
In a very positive development for the Scenic Eclipse build and the Uljanik Group, a consortium comprised of the Croatian DIV group and Italian Shipyard Fincantieri was confirmed on 7 February as the new owner of Uljanik. Accordingly, Scenic is confident that these new owners will bring stability and focus to current and future ship builds.
Accordingly, the Scenic Group has signed a letter of intent with the new consortium that will lead the shipyard to set up a new Discovery Yacht division within the restructured Uljanik group. This new joint venture will be fully focused on completing Scenic Eclipse and on expediting the build of the second Scenic Eclipse, as well as progressing development of the next generations of Scenic’s Discovery Yachts.
