Royal Caribbean ships home registry?

[BillOh]

As I get close to my next cruise, cruising dominates my thoughts when my mind wanders which is often.  I believe all of Royal's ships, at least the ones I have been on are registered in the Bahamas. Am I wrong? (Not my main question) 🙂 )  I do I know Voyager is indeed registered here.  I took this photo on my first ever cruise back in 2006.  This brings me to my main question. On May 4th Voyager stops in Nassau on her way from Galveston to Barcelona.   I will be back on Voyager for the first time next April, so I plan on catching her on teh PZTV webcam when she stops here.   That led to my real question, does a ship have to return to her registered port every so often to keep that registration valid?  To the best of my memory, Voyager hasn't been back in Nassau since I got off of her back in May of 2006. I don't claim this as fact.

[gatour]

No.  It is a registration of convience although I think there are some rules that they have to abide.  Which depends on country of registration

[smokeybandit]

The same reason many US companies are incorporated in Delaware and many semi trailers have Maine plates.

[BillOh]

Just now, smokeybandit said:

The same reason many US companies are incorporated in Delaware and many semi trailers have Maine plates.

Nice info, not that I asked what the reason was, you don't say, just mention "the reason"  I know as @gatour said its a registration of convenience, which is understandable.  The main question was are there rules about that and specifically do they have to return to the home port ever?

[smokeybandit]

It has nothing to do with going "home" once in a while. It's just about taxes and other rules they have to follow (or better yet, not have to follow if they were flagged in the USA). And obviously those taxes and rules are the most favorable in those popular registry countries like Bahamas, Malta, Panama, etc.

[Anton]

Flags of convenience and open registry are the search terms to use.   Bahamas is one of the open registry countries.  So is Vanuatu.  We can safely assume that the ships registered in Vanuatu never visit there.  It’s apparently quite a good business.  I just learned that the Liberian registry is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia and has a contract with the Liberian government to split the registry fees between the government and the owners of the registry corporation.  

[Biker19]

1 hour ago, BillOh said:

Am I wrong?

Spectrum is registered in Cyprus.

[Tatka]

1 hour ago, BillOh said:

Nice info, not that I asked what the reason was, you don't say, just mention "the reason"  I know as @gatour said its a registration of convenience, which is understandable.  The main question was are there rules about that and specifically do they have to return to the home port ever?

 

Information about Flag of convenience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience

[smokeybandit]

37 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

Spectrum is registered in Cyprus.

I believe that was a somewhat recent change.

[BillOh]

2 hours ago, Biker19 said:

Spectrum is registered in Cyprus.

I didn't know that! Interesting

[RobInMN]

3 hours ago, Biker19 said:

Spectrum is registered in Cyprus.

 

2 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

I believe that was a somewhat recent change.

 

13 minutes ago, BillOh said:

I didn't know that! Interesting

 

Discussion from January 2023:

 

 

[Pratique]

4 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

The same reason many US companies are incorporated in Delaware and many semi trailers have Maine plates.

Another reason is that foreign-built ships generally cannot be flagged in the U.S. (even if they wanted to) due to the protectionist laws intended to support domestic ship construction. These laws seem to further incentivize foreign-flagging as long as they still permit those ships to call in the U.S. as they do now.

 

Walk around the harbors in South Florida and count how many mega yachts are registered in the Marshall Islands.