AIDA Cruises amends itineraries for three ships due to Red Sea security crisis

AIDA Cruises has amended the spring 2025 itineraries for three of its ships due to the ongoing security crisis in the Red Sea area.

The repositioning voyages of AIDAprima and AIDAstella have been altered, forcing the cancellation of several Mediterranean cruises, which will instead be picked up by AIDAcosma.

AIDAprima will spend the 2024/25 winter cruise season homeporting in Dubai, sailing roundtrip week-long cruises in the Arabian Gulf, but instead of repositioning to Europe via the Suez Canal as planned, she will sail around Africa.

According to a statement shared by AIDA, all cruises scheduled aboard AIDAprima between March 2nd and March 23rd, 2025, are now canceled.

AIDAstella’s canceled sailings include all cruises previously scheduled to depart between April 17th and May 20th, 2025. 

AIDAstella will be returning to the Mediterranean from Asia, where she will spend the 2024/25 winter season. The ship will sail varied itineraries in the Far East departing from Thailand, Japan, China and more.

To make room for its new sailings in the Mediterranean, five cruises to the Canary Islands aboard AIDAcosma in April 2025 have been canceled.

With AIDAcosma due to be back in the Mediterranean, some cruises in the region that were previously set to be offered by the AIDAprima will be transferred to the AIDAcosma. These include all the departures scheduled for April 11th – 18th, 2025.

AIDAprima will then take over the cruise previously scheduled to take place aboard AIDAcosma on April 12th, 2025 in the Canaries.

AIDAstella and the AIDAprima will offer new repositioning itineraries via the Indian Ocean and Africa, with bookings expected to open in September.

All major cruise lines have been avoiding the Red Sea since the beginning of the year due to Houthi attacks on internationally shipping off the coast of Yemen, cutting cruise lines off from the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.

Cruises from Dubai are seen as risky by some passengers, even though the Arabian Gulf itself is not at risk of any insecurity amid the Israel-Gaza war and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, while the UAE is one of the safest countries in the world.

Whereas cruise occupancy is at 111% in the Caribbean and 107% in the Mediterranean, it’s at 90% in the Middle East and Africa, according to Oxford Economics.

During a cruise-focused conference panel at ATM 2024, Dave Goodger, managing director of EMEA Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics, stressed that the industry was “very resilient”.

“There is this perception of risk and [tourism is] driven by perceptions,” Goodger said. “When there are adverse effects, people tend to stay away, but travellers come back. There is an impact today, but that’s not to say it’ll impact the industry tomorrow.”

Dubai and the wider Middle Eastern cruise sector has proven itself resilient to disruption in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic the entire cruise industry was shut down globally, and the 2020/21 cruise season in Dubai ended early as a result.

By November, 2020 however, Dubai had reopened to cruises, and although numbers were significantly lower than the pre-pandemic high, by 2023 there was a near full recovery.