| IMO | 9837925 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 5,922 GT |
| Length | 101.5 m |
| Beam | 17 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 100 |
| Crew | 80 |
| Service speed | 12.0 knots |
| Builder | Shipyard De Hoop |
| Yard | Lobith |
| Hull number | 488 |
| Launched | 2019 |
| Maiden voyage | 2019-06-30 |
| Operator | Celebrity Cruises |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Celebrity Flora is an expedition cruise ship built by Shipyard De Hoop in the Netherlands for Celebrity Cruises and delivered in 2019, purpose-designed for one destination: the Galápagos Islands. At 5,922 GT she was, on delivery, the largest vessel by gross tonnage operating in the Galápagos and the first new expedition ship built for Celebrity. She sails under the Ecuadorian flag from Guayaquil, operated through Royal Caribbean Group's Ecuador-based subsidiary — a flag and registry arrangement dictated by the rules governing cruising in the Galápagos National Park.
Her passenger figure is also regulatory: 100 guests is the maximum permitted for a vessel cruising in the Galápagos, so Flora is built exactly to the legal ceiling, with 50 suites and a crew of 80 — a crew-to-guest ratio of about 1:1.25 that reflects the park's requirement for licensed naturalist guides to accompany small landing groups. She replaced the role previously filled by the much smaller Celebrity Xpedition as the line's Galápagos flagship.
Key specifications
The dataset records Celebrity Flora at 5,922 GT, 101.5 metres long and 17 metres in beam, with a capacity of 100 passengers, a crew of 80 and a service speed of 12.0 knots. Her maximum speed is higher — 14.5 knots in her published characteristics — but 12 knots is the service figure, and it is all a ship on short inter-island legs requires. Her draught is just 4.5 metres, shallow for her size, and she has six decks.
One variant is worth flagging: some early Celebrity fact material quoted 5,739 tons for this hull, a figure still repeated by aggregators. The delivered, registered figure in her published characteristics — and in the dataset — is 5,922 GT, and that is the figure used here. Her plant is diesel-electric: four Caterpillar C32 generator sets feeding two Steerprop rudder-propeller units of 1.45 MW each, an arrangement chosen for manoeuvrability and efficiency in confined island anchorages; the line claimed about 15 per cent lower fuel consumption than comparable expedition ships at her introduction.
Design and construction
Celebrity Flora was ordered in November 2017, the order officially placed on 17 November, and built at De Hoop's yard at Lobith-Tolkamer on the Rhine as yard number 488 — the largest ship the yard had built to that date. Her keel was laid on 15 December 2017 (some yard reporting gives 13 December for the keel ceremony; the published history date is used here). Because the yard sits on a river rather than the sea, the partly completed hull was photographed on the slipway above the Rhine before she was launched on 29 January 2019.
The design brief was destination-first in a way unusual even for expedition ships. She was not a generic small ship assigned to the Galápagos but was designed around its rules and geography: the 100-passenger legal limit, naturalist-guided landings in small groups, Zodiac operations, and the environmental sensitivity of a national park and marine reserve. Dynamic positioning lets her hold station without anchoring on sensitive seabeds, and her hull form and diesel plant were specified for low fuel burn and emissions in a protected area. She was delivered at Rotterdam on 13 May 2019.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
The name Flora — like her Galápagos predecessor names in Celebrity's expedition fleet — references the islands' natural world rather than a person or place. She was launched on 29 January 2019 at Lobith and delivered on 13 May 2019.
She was christened on 24 June 2019. Her godmother was Yolanda Kakabadse, the Ecuadorian conservationist and former president of WWF International — a sponsor chosen, unusually, from the destination's own environmental movement rather than from entertainment or sport. Her maiden voyage followed on 30 June 2019, the date in the dataset, beginning the year-round Galápagos service for which she was built.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2019–present | Celebrity Flora | Celebrity Cruises (operated by Islas Galápagos Turismo y Vapores C.A., Royal Caribbean Group) |
One name and one operating group throughout. The operating-company detail in the table is not a transfer: Ecuadorian rules require Galápagos cruising to be conducted by a locally based operator, which Royal Caribbean Group provides through its Ecuadorian subsidiary, with the ship marketed and sold as a Celebrity Cruises vessel.
Onboard character
Flora's era-defining character is that of the luxury expedition ship shrunk to a legal limit. With only 50 suites — all of them suites, in Celebrity's presentation — she applies the space and service standards of the line's large ships to a hull a twentieth of their size. The design centres on the destination: a marina platform for Zodiac boarding, a dedicated space for naturalist briefings and an onboard laboratory element, the "Galápagos Discovery" concept in the line's own description, reflecting the park model in which education and guided interpretation are part of the permitted product, not entertainment added to it.
She also marks the moment a mainstream premium brand stopped treating expedition cruising as a converted-ship sideline. A purpose-built, destination-locked ship for a single archipelago, ordered by one of the world's largest cruise groups, signalled that the expedition sector's growth justified bespoke tonnage even at 100 berths.
Major refits and incidents
No grounding, fire, collision or other major incident involving Celebrity Flora is recorded in the sources consulted. Her yard record consists of routine maintenance: a scheduled drydocking of about ten days at Panama City, Panama, in October 2023 is reported in secondary ship summaries, with no venue-changing refit associated with it. Given her single-destination service, her maintenance pattern is that of a ship that rarely leaves her operating area, with yard periods planned around it.
Sister ships and class
Celebrity Flora has no sister ship, and the dataset leaves her class field blank. She is a one-off design for a single destination. Her stablemates in Celebrity's Galápagos operation — the smaller Celebrity Xpedition and Celebrity Xploration — are older, converted or purpose-built small vessels of entirely different design, not sisters. Her closest conceptual relatives are the other mainstream-brand expedition newbuilds of her period, but technically she stands alone.
Fate and where she is now
Celebrity Flora is active and in service as Celebrity Cruises' Galápagos ship, the purpose for which she was built in 2019. She has never been sold, renamed or reassigned, and — because her design, flag and certification are specific to the Galápagos — no other fate is readily available to her. None is recorded.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Flora, https://www.offshore-energy.biz/2019/05/15/shipyard-de-hoop-delivers-new-expedition-ship-to-celebrity-cruises, https://widgety-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/04/21/19/27/36/41da9f51-69c2-460f-a639-8cfa757ab5a4/17059408_CEL_Flora_FAQsV2-Final.pdf