World Cup cruises compared

For the rugby world cup the situation is clear – around 10,000 fans who buy tickets for the event in New Zealand will be staying in flo-tels, floating hotels, provided by Adventure World and CruiseCo. The set up will not be to sail to the rugby, but to fly out to New Zealand and stay on one of the five cruise liners, which will be berthed in various locations: two in Wellington, two in Auckland and one in Lyttelton. Package trips will go on sail on 1st January 2010 and around 700,000 of the 1.7 million tickets will be made available overseas fans.

But in South Africa for the football world cup, things are much less clear, although the event is taking place a year earlier. It was intended that after the deal to moor QE2 in Dubai as a hotel fell through, she would go to Cape Town to act as a flotel there, but apparently the port authority says there is nowhere to dock her. Two other ships are going to be cruising to the world cup though: Holland America Line's Westerdam and Noordam, will sail to South Africa and accommodate tourists attending the world cup, during the football tournament and they have been approved for berthing during the whole of the event.