Louis Cruise Lines
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Cruise line |
| Headquarters | Limassol, Cyprus |
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Area served
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Eastern Mediterranean |
| Services | Cruise ship operations and chartering |
| Parent | Louis group PLC |
| Website | http://www.celestyalcruises.com |
Celestyal Cruises (formerly Louis Cruises and Louis Cruise Lines) is a Cyprus-based cruise line that operates cruises from Cyprus, France, Italy, India and Greece (the operations from Greece were previously marketed under the name Louis Hellenic Cruise Lines, but as of 2008 there is no mention of the brand on Louis' website). The company also charters several ships to Thomson Cruises. Although Celestial started operating short cruises out of Cyprus in the early 70s, Celestyal Cruises was officially established in 1986 as Louis Cruises when MV Princesa Marissa, its first owned cruise ship, was purchased. Celestyal Cruises is a subsidiary of Louis plc and member of Louis Group, the leading tourism group in the Eastern Mediterranean, founded in 1935 by the late Louis Loizou, acknowledged as the "father of Cyprus tourism".
Louis plc is a public listed company whose shares are quoted in the .
The Celestyal Cruises fleet consist mainly of older second- or third-hand ships. One of its past vessels, the The Emerald, was the last ocean liner built in the US to be in service. She was laid up in 2012 due to not being compatible with SOLAS 2010.
Celestyal Cruises is a subsidiary of the Cyprus-based travel and tourism group Louis plc, that was founded in 1935 as the first travel agency in Cyprus. During the 1970s the company began chartering ferries for short cruises Cyprus, which eventually led to the purchase of the cruiseferry MV Prinsessan from the Finland-based Birka Line for $4 million in 1987. Renamed MV Princesa Marissa, the ship started making cruises from Limassol to the Greek Isles, Egypt and Israel under the then newly established Louis Cruise Lines band. By 1994 the company had acquired three more ships, all of which were used in the short cruise market from Cyprus.
In the mid-1990s Louis Cruise Lines entered the business of chartering ships to other companies, chartering MV Princesa Oceanica (renamed Sapphire) to the UK-based Thomson Cruises in 1996. The following year the newly acquired The Emerald was also chartered to Thomson. In 1999 Louis chartered the 1998-acquired SS Ausonia to First Choice Holidays, one of Thomson's competitors in the UK market. By this time the Louis fleet consisted of a total of eight ships. In 1999 Louis also acquired a stake in the Greece-based Royal Olympic Cruises. Royal Olympic was already in difficulties by the time Louis became involved with the company, and the 11 September 2001 attacks dealt a further blow, finally leading to the collapse of Royal Olympic in 2004.
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