According to the latest issue of Seatrade Cruise Review, Royal Caribbean will pull its ships out of Dubai following the 2013 cruise season.

Royal Caribbean regional director, Helen Beck, discussed the reason for the change, "We were initially very pleased with the business development there and expected continued growth; however, the demand has declined in recent seasons and as a result we have had to make some difficult decisions, driven by strategic and financial considerations, about discontinuing our program there."

Beck said that Serenade of the Seas, will remain in Dubai as scheduled for the 2013 winter season but operate an abbreviated season of 11 seven-night cruises out of Dubai to Fujairah, Abu Dhabi and Muscat starting January 28.

Royal Caribbean had initially announced 17 sailings; the upcoming Gulf season will be shortened because Serenade of the Seas is scheduled for revitalization in late 2012.

Royal Caribbean could return to Gulf waters if demand improves over time, Beck told Seatrade Cruise Review.

The Bahamas Maritime Authority approved a new plan by Royal Caribbean to use an alternate way of calculating its compliance with new air pollution rules.

Royal Caribbean had asked to start a fleet-wide sulfur averaging and banking plan to comply with new restrictions on sulfur emissions that took effect on August 1. Those rules limit the sulfur content of marine fuel to 1%, to curb emissions of sulfur dioxide. 

Low-sulfur fuel is more expensive than heavy fuel oil, which can potentially raise the price of a cruise by $15 to $18 per day.

The new pollution calculations allow some Royal Caribbean ships exceed sulfur emission rules if other Royal Caribbean ships can run a surplus under the standard, or a single ship to balance the use of high and low sulfur fuel so that when averaged it meets the new requirement. 

It also provides credits for using shore power, exhaust scrubbers and liquid natural gas.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Canadian regulators have signed off on the plan, which has also been submitted to Malta, where other Royal Carubbean ships are flagged.

Royal Caribbean will be able to use the method for five years and can reapply after that.  

Royal Caribbean announced that it will offer a new New Orleans to Bahamas cruise in Fall 2013 aboard Serenade of the Seas.

The new itinerary will include stops at  Key West, Florida; Nassau, the Bahamas; and CoCo Cay, Royal Caribbean’s private island also in the Bahamas. This route will alternate with the current Western Caribbean route sailed for the past few years. One special 9 night cruise will be available as the first cruise of the season out of New Orleans in December 2013.

In addition to this new route, Royal Caribbean will welcome Serenade of the Seas to the city in Fall 2013 for the winter season.

Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas will skip a scheduled stop in Alexandria, Egypt on on Tuesday, September 18 due to rising anti-American sentiment and violence in Egypt over the last few days.

Instead, Mariner of the Seas will now call to Sicily (Messina), Italy, on Sunday, September 16, and Valletta, Malta, on Monday, September 17.

The change was made for cautionary reasons after a new film was released in America that is anti-Islam.

Royal Caribbean will continue to monitor the situation in Egypt to determine if more itinerary changes are needed.

OceansTV has announced that it has reached a deal with Royal Caribbean to supply a broad ranging TV channel package covering the European and Asian regions.

The deal covers ten of Royal Caribbean's ships, including Independence of the Seas, Liberty of the Seas and Mariner of the Seas, will receive the channels.  The deal will allow passengers on Royal Caribbean ships to watch in the comfort of their staterooms include RTL9, CNBC Europe and channels from the BBC, RAI and TVE.

Vision of the Seas will air a selection of Scandinavian channels including SVT1, NRK1, TV2 and Eurosport Nordic. Voyager of the Seas and Legend of the Seas which are offering cruises in Asia are showing popular channels onboard such as KBS World, CCTV4, CNBC Asia and MTV China.

"We've thoroughly enjoyed working closely with Royal Caribbean to supply them with a rich and entertaining TV channel package tailored to the tastes of the passengers onboard," said Andy McEwan, CEO of OceansTV. "Our network of TV content suppliers is growing all the time and we're delighted to be in a position to offer cruise lines such a fantastic choice of high quality channels."

Royal Caribbean is partnering with Barbados Port and SMI Infrastructure Solutions to build a brand new state-of-the-art cruise terminal in Barbados that will cost over $300 million.  The new facility will allow some of the world's biggest cruise ships to dock at the island.

George Hutson, Barbados Minister of International Transport and International Business, announced the two year project at the recent Barbados Port Inc.’s 50th anniversary staff awards ceremony.

“If we are going to remain relevant, if we are going to capitalize on the opportunities available from cruise tourism, we must renew our plant from the basic infrastructure currently existing to one which will accommodate and service the increasingly large cruise ships."

According to Hutson, Barbados is hoping the new cruise terminal will attract more cruise ships to the island, which in turn will lead to increasing revenue generated by cruise passengers on the island.

The new terminal will be completed in two phases, the first phase will cost $300 million and will include two cruise piers, arrival and departure facilities, along with parking lots. The development will take involve reclaiming 15 acres of land from the sea, 100,000 square feet of which will be provided for commercial activity. Dredging is slated to begin in November.

Cruise tourism in Barbados has grown from 127,000 in 1985 to 726,543 last year.  The best year ever for cruise passenger traffic to the island was 2004 when 812,863 people visited the island.

The Ukrainian government will begin promoting the development of a cruise industry in its country, specifically eyeing the ports of Odessa, Sevastopol and Yalta as prime candidates.

Royal Caribbean vice president Craig Maylen met with Ukranian Minister of Infrastructure Borys Kolesnikov during a visit to the United States.  Maylen talked about the future of the ports, "Odessa port has great prospects for receiving cruise ships, as it is in the heart of the city, and it is very convenient for tourists"

The meeting took place in Royal Caribbean's headquarters in Miami, Florida where the two sides discussed a number of issues regarding the  potential of Ukrainian ports in the cruise industry. 

According to Maylen the port has quite a good infrastructure. With certain infrastructure improvements in Yalta and Sevastopol, the ports could be upgraded to handle considerably larger cruise ships than they serve now.

Royal Caribbean's Board of Directors announced today that it will offer its shareholders a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share payable on October 9, 2012, to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 25, 2012.

Dividends from the cruise have been $0.10 since 2008 after it dropped from its highest $0.15. This new change in dividends is an increase of 20 percent.

Royal Caribbean chairman Richard Fain commented on the change, "I am pleased that our Board of Directors increased the quarterly dividend payment today. We have consistently communicated our desire to balance rational growth, leverage reduction and shareholder return improvement. I think today's actions are further evidence that these goals can coexist harmoniously."

Reports from passengers aboard Royal Caribbean's Jewel of the Seas are that due to Tropical Storm Leslie, Jewel of the Seas will not call on Newfoundland on Thursday.

The ship's captain indicated to passengers that Jewel of the Seas will go around the storm and go instead directly to Boston. Jewel of the Seas is making a trans-Atlantic crossing from Iceland.

In addition, Brilliance of the Seas is doing its part to avoid Leslie and will skip the Faroe Islands and proceed directly to Iceland.

These changes have not been formally announced by Royal Caribbean yet but the reports are coming from passengers aboard the respective ships.

Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas was designed with technology in mind to make the ship easier to navigate for the passengers and crew onboard through tools like RFID, facial recognition and handheld wireless devices for a variety of purposes, including emergency responses, food safety, point-of-sale (POS) transactions and passenger service.

Royal Caribbean vice president of information Technology, Santiago Abraham, spoke about the important of technology on the ship, "We were keenly aware that we were building the biggest ship in the world and we wanted to make sure the experience nonetheless was an intimate one, and eliminate any sense that you are on a massive ship."

To help get passengers around the ship and find their way, Oasis of the Seas has over 300 digital, interactive signs that people can use to access maps, get directions, see scheduled activities and check in real-time the occupancy level of restaurants.

"The digital signage helps our guests navigate the ship," Abraham said of the system, whose touchscreen devices use Windows 7 on the front end and tap SQL Server and other Windows server products on the back end. "You see guests interacting with it on a pretty continual basis very effectively."

Royal Caribbean's IT department also automated retail transactions and food inspections on board with PAR Technology terminals and tablets running software from Agilysys and the Windows Embedded OS.

The technology helps food inspections be done in two hours instead of five thanks to devices that have temperature probes and readers to scan RFID tags on the food containers.

The Point of Sales and food inspection data is instantly fed to back-end Microsoft SQL Server databases where it is automatically analyzed and acted upon, whether it's to replenish low inventory in a store or to order that a food container be discarded.

From Microsoft's perspective, Royal Caribbean has achieved in Oasis of the Seas the "intelligent system" vision of the Windows Embedded products, in which client devices are used to gather data that is then stored on the back end and analyzed for operational improvements.

Abraham said Royal Caribbean is very satisfied with the way the IT infrastructure in Oasis of the Seas helps passengers and staffers without being intrusive or complicated.

"We were trying to have technology help our guests in terms of their experience on board, whether it's boarding the ship, learning more about activities or planning their day, but we also didn't want to be 'in your face' with the technology, so it's all very embedded in a lot of different elements," Abraham said.