By
Rebecca Gibson |
Finnish shipyard Meyer Turku started work on TUI Cruises’ latest Mein Schiff vessel on 16 August.
TUI Cruises’ project manager for newbuilds Georgios Vagiannis started the steel cutting process for the new Mein Schiff 1, which is the first in a series of larger Mein Schiff vessels.
Mein Schiff 1 will be around 20m longer than TUI Cruises’ existing vessels and Mein Schiff 5 and 6, allowing space for 180 additional cabins. The 2,894-guest vessel will also feature various other guest experience and technical improvements.
“The new Mein Schiff 1 will, more than ever, be built around the wishes of our guests,” said Wybcke Meier, CEO of TUI Cruises.
Mein Schiff 1 will be delivered in 2018 and will replace the existing Mein Schiff 1, while her sister will replace the current Mein Schiff 2 when she debuts in 2019. The existing vessels will be transferred to TUI Group’s other cruise brand, Thomson Cruises.
“After intensive collaboration with TUI Cruises and substantial new design work, we are happy to see that our ideas are starting to become reality with cutting the first steel for the new Mein Schiff 1,” said Jan Meyer, CEO of Meyer Turku. “For Meyer Turku the new design also shows how real improvements can be achieved even within a long series of ships. This nicely shows that working long-term with the leading ship owners, that we are iteratively improving on already good designs to new levels of performance, which otherwise would be hard to reach. In other industries this ideation, design, realisation and reality feedback approach is called ‘design thinking’. Our approach is that it’s in the core DNA of shipbuilding.”