Viking do they own the ships??

[Ed the sailor man]

Received a contract for a cruise on the new Viking Star. It says Viking is only an agent for the sale of the cruises and disclaims any liability for any part of the cruise. The contract seems to say that the ship and all crew are third party vendors. Of Course the disclaimers are to say the least extensive.

 

There is no indication of who the vendor is that provides the ship and services. An no contract between the folks taking a cruise and the third party.

 

I am not a lawyer does anyone have any insight into if this is a common arrangement?:confused:

[Bear_Music]

I'm pretty sure it's common to create layers of interlocking corporations to own the ships, staff them, and sell the cruises. I'm no expert though.

[Host Jazzbeau]

There are a few smaller companies that lease or charter their ships, but Viking designs and builds their own ships.

 

Of course with their policy requiring full payment a year (or more) before sailing, you could argue that their ships are financed by leveraging [or as we simple consumers would say, "a house of cards"].

[Bear_Music]

Of course with their policy requiring full payment a year (or more) before sailing, you could argue that their ships are financed by leveraging [or as we simple consumers would say, "a house of cards"].

 

LOL! That might be close to true: IF they ran the ship 300 days the first year and prebooked all the cabins for an average $400+ per passenger per day, that'd be something like $120,000,000 cash brought in before she even ran the first cruise :)

 

What does it cost to BUILD the dang thing? I can't find any figures on the smaller ships like Viking Star (47,800 gross tonnage) but in 2007 it cost $500,000,000 to build the 110,000 gross ton Carnival Freedom, so you got to figure 7-8 years later for a ship half the size, what? $300,000,000? $400,000,000? A lot, anyway...

[Ed the sailor man]

Without verification lets accept your numbers. That being so 120 million lowers their risk to practically zero. Big capital acquisitions are not out of pocket expenditures. They finance. So the actual cost to the company for the cost of acquiring a ship for each year would be the interest and principle on the loan which would be significantly less than 120 million.

 

Depreciation is the biggest expense over time and if 400 million is the cost of the ship and it has a 10 year useful life not including refurbs Depreciation would account for 40million but not until the ship is in service. Assume the 400 million dollar loan is all up front which it would not be and interest is 5%. Interest would be roughly 20,000,000 the first year. So 120 m is a good cushion.

 

Not a bad business.

[fastbailer]

Another fun feature is the Viking booklet of terms that describes its liability for what may go wrong ... if you have a claim you need to file it within thirty days at "any address in this booklet." Problem is the bo0klet has no addresses at all!

[oregon50]

I would never assume Viking owns the Star. Nor do I assume any ship or plane that carries me is owned by the name on the door.

[captainmcd]

Ships registered in Malta will have an owner of record in Malta, and this can be arranged when registering the ship. The company in Malta can be a wholy owned subsidiary of another corporation elsewhere.