ss Norway attracts hotel interests

Norway attracts hotel interests

UNNAMED French investors are said to have approached Norwegian Cruise Lines
(NCL) with an offer to

purchase the vintage cruise liner Norway currently laid up in Bremerhaven.
The idea would be to use

the ship as a floating hotel in France. Sources in Paris say the hotel group
Accor, the owner of

numerous brands such as Novotel, Sofitel and Mercure, could be behind the
project, but no further

details have emerged. The 76,000gt cruise ship was built by Chantiers de l'
Atlantique as the France for

Compagnie Générale Transatlantique in 1961. Initially used as a
trans-Atlantic liner between Europe

and the US, the France was withdrawn from service in 1974 and sold to Norway
's Kloster group in

1979, becoming the Norway. The vessel underwent extensive modification for
the cruise sector and its

passenger capacity was boosted from 2,000 to 2,480. In May last year, the
ship suffered a major boiler

explosion at Miami, which killed eight crew members. NCL has said the cost
of repair works on the

engine are not justified and so put the vessel up for sale a few weeks ago
at a price reported to be

around ?25M ($29.8M). NCL has not said how much interest the Norway has
generated and other

reports suggest is in discussions with Dutch interests to transform the
vessel into a floating hotel in the

port of Amsterdam.

Why do these reports always have "un-named" investors interested in buying old
ships?

Most of the time nothing ever comes of it.
Sean