Star Cruises

Star Cruises was the true first cruise company focused exclusively on the Chinese and Asian markets. With small and medium-sized ships, they opened the doors for many other tourism companies in the region and today is part of a select group of companies exploring the Chinese market, the most emerging cruise trend in the world.

Founded in 1993, Star Cruises started their operations as a subsidiary of the Genting group, operating only two ferry ships for cruises across Asia. In 1999, the company bought another company named Sun Cruises and then in the year 2000, acquired the Norwegian Cruise Line, thus becoming the largest cruise company in the world that year. Since 2006, the trend has been that new ships were to be built for NCL, and the old ships in the NCL fleet would be transferred to the Star Cruises fleet in Asia. In 2007, Star sold 50% of NCL to the Apollo Management group and then in 2013, following a corporate reorganization and an initial public offering, NCL was made a wholly owned subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) were it would then be owned by the Genting Group and not by Star Cruises itself. On 3 December 2018, Star and Apollo sold off their remaining stakes in Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, marking the end of a relationship that lasted more than a decade.

In the process of merging and acquiring other companies, most of the crew members previously working for Star Cruises were transferred across the fleet, and besides most opting for work at Norwegian Cruise Line, many stayed working for Star Cruises up to this day.