Piraeus Greece-based company Celestyal Cruises sold a ship it had acquired from Carnival Corporation's subsidiary Costa Cruises in July 2020. Curiously, the vessel was never put into service/shipping passengers.
The sale of the 1993-built Celestyal Experience (fka Costa neoRomantica) was unveiled on Friday, September 3, with the company citing the need to defer capacity growth in the aftermath of the COVID crisis.
In a statement, Celestyal Cruises (subsidiary of Louis Group) said that after careful thought and consideration, the company had sold Celestyal Experience and would continue to operate the same sized fleet that had "served it well before the pandemic."
Celestyal is again left with the 1982-built Celestyal Olympia and the 1980-built Celestyal Crystal. Both ships had an Aegean summer cruise season in 2021 but Celestyal Experience remained laid up in Port Piraeus-Athens since she was acquired.
Celestyal has not revealed the new shipowner and how much it had sold Celestyal Experience for but parent company Louis Group said in an announcement to the Cyprus bourse the sale had generated an accounting gain of ~USD 3,6 million (EUR 3M).
Celestyal said the decision to sell the Experience would also "provide the company with enhanced liquidity, which in combination with zero third-party debt forms the continued solid financial foundation to ensure a successful restart in March 2022."