Carnival Corporation’s Costa Cruises said its LNG-powered Costa Toscana has departed Italy’s port city of Savona on its maiden cruise.
The 185,000 GT vessel left Savona on Saturday towards France’s Marseille. The week-long itinerary also includes Barcelona, Valencia, Palermo and Civitavecchia/Rome, according to Costa Cruises.
Following its debut, the new flagship will remain deployed in the Western Mediterranean throughout the year.
Costa Cruise took delivery of this 337 meters long cruise ship in December from the Meyer Turku yard in Finland.
It is a sister vessel to LNG-powered Costa Smeralda that joined the Italian brand of Carnival in 2019.
Also, Costa Toscana marks the restart of the Costa Cruises fleet after the pandemic pause.
In fact, after Costa Toscana, seven more ships would return to operation, joining those already in service, until this summer, when the entire fleet of 12 ships would be operational again, the firm said.
“Our restart will bolster an ecosystem that before the pandemic generated an annual economic impact of 12.6 billion euros in Europe, including 3.5 billion in Italy alone, with over 63,000 jobs,” Mario Zanetti, president of Costa Cruises said.