New Costa Deliziosa cruise ship

The newest Costa Cruise liner, Costa Deliziosa, is going to have her naming ceremony in Dubai, which will make her the first cruise ship to be inaugurated in an Arab city. Her naming ceremony will be held on 23rd February 2010, and she’ll then be based in the United Arab Emirates until May – her maiden voyages will be a sequence of seven-night cruises visiting Muscat, Fujairah, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

This is a continuing tradition for Costa, which based its first ship in Dubai in 2006 to provide ‘winter sun’ cruises. It’s expected that the three Costa ships sailing out of the Emirates in 2010 will carry 140,000 passengers in the next twelve months. Deliziosa, Costa Luminosa and Costa Europa will, between them, make 32 port calls at the new cruise terminal in Port Rashid, Dubai.

It’s an interesting development, given the recent cutting back on tourist development in the Emirates – QE2 has not become a floating hotel yet: the refurbishment she was due to have this year has been put on hold, and the artificial reef island from which she was to be moored has not been completed either.

Cruise passengers joining the ship on the first tranche of her maiden cruise, sailing from Savona in Italy to Dubai, will also be able to take part in the naming ceremony. The twenty day trip from Italy to Dubai is also unusual - maiden voyages tend to be short, three to five day cruises, to iron out any teething problems on the ship. Deliziosa will feature a 4D cinema, a Grand Prix driving simulator and PlayStation World which is devoted to PlayStation3.