An apartment on cruise liner the World, which has 165 privately owned apartments and which visits Napier in October during a 2024 world tour of more than 90 ports. Photo / Supplied.
Known as the World, also described as a “launch”, it is actually a 196.35m-long ship, and effectively a floating apartmentbuilding.
The World on its first visit to Napier in 2006. Photo / NZME
It has 165 purchased apartments and is expected to berth at the end of October, on a voyage from Wellington to the Bay of Islands as part of a 2024 tour sailing three expeditions, five oceans, and six continents, including Antarctica, to which it sailed in January. It visits more than 90 ports this year.
A unique welcoming party as the World visits the arctic regions of the globe. Photo / Supplied
Launched in 2002, the apartment ownership means the World is collectively owned by the residents, with residences from single living-area studios to two and three bedroom apartments up to 300sqm, each with a personal housekeeper, and on an average of about 150 “families” or 200 people aboard, and owners each averaging at least a third of each year on board.
When the apartments are not being used by owners or friends they can become available by arrangement as extended guest accommodation for friends and family of other apartment owners.
Last year, the Times reported apartments had been priced from $2 million to $15m , and, also on average, about one-tenth are for sale at any one time.
It quoted one resident as saying: “We tend to stay on the ship for six to eight weeks at a time. Then I need to go home and make my own bed, do my own grocery shopping and realise this isn’t real.”
A spokesperson said: “Many of our owners are self-made entrepreneurs. Name an industry and we have it.
“They aren’t celebrities whose names people would know globally, but many are very well known in their home countries.”
The World has visited Napier at least twice in the past - in November 2006 and February 2017 - and its October stay will be just the fourth cruise stop at Napier of over 80 in the October-May season, the biggest being Quantum of the Seas and Ovation of the Seas, each more than 300m long and with up to 7000 passengers.
While the Napier Port cruise schedule shows the vessel arriving on October 29 and departing on October 31, a spokesperson for operators ResidenSea say that because of privacy provisions they can’t divulge details of the visit other than confirming the World will berth at Napier.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 40 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
