Gulf Investors Involved in $1.7 Billion Funding of Virgin Cruise Launch

Virgin has secured most of the US$1.7 billion funding needed to launch Virgin Cruise, some of which has come from investors in the Arabian Gulf.

The capital will be used to build a cruise fleet from scratch to work in the Caribbean and Mediterranean markets and will be headquartered in Miami.

“Most of the money is committed. We will start by building two large ships from scratch, we think the Virgin brand will work very well for cruises,” said Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin.

“We have airlines, holiday companies that send a lot of people on cruises, we have a concept which is very sexy and hopefully it will be the kind of cruise ship I’d like to go on and the type my children will go on.”

The British entrepreneur who is in Dubai to speak at the du CEO Forum, said he was also seeking investment for Virgin Oceanic, a sister company to Virgin Galactic, to build submarines that can explore the depths of the ocean.

“The oceans are much less explored than space is explored. Only two people have been to the bottom of the ocean … there’s no craft as yet to properly explore the oceans,” said Sir Richard. “We’re looking to build vehicles to explore the oceans. This region has some beautiful seas well worth exploring.”

He also hinted at positive corporate results after a tie-up with Delta Airlines, which has helped the Virgin Atlantic airline win some corporate accounts. He said he was also “delighted” that the Australian government did not give the struggling airline Qantas a A$2 billion (Dh6.68bn) guarantee, “which would have ended up titling the playing field”.

Last year Abu Dhabi’s Etihad increased its stake in Virgin Australia from 19.9 per cent to 22.9 per cent. Sir Richard did not rule out further changes to Virgin Australia’s shareholder make-up.

“Whether Etihad want to increase their stake in Virgin Australia is up to them,” he said.