This move will leave Carnival with six vessels in China, which the company believes will become the largest market in the world.

Carnival said its Asian business continually delivers double-digit annual returns and the latest move boosts its China capacity by 58%.

Alan Buckelew, chief operations officer for Carnival, said: “Our Costa and Princess brands are performing extremely well in China and these new ship deployments will strengthen our growth position and enable us to carry nearly one million passengers in 2016.”

China