It comes after MSC Cruises on Monday became the latest line to confirm a return to the UK, a week after Norwegian Cruise Line confirmed it would be placing Norwegian Jade out of Southampton in 2017.

“It’s a phenomenal amount of extra capacity,” said Miles Morgan, owner of Miles Morgan Travel.

“Making the assumption that existing ex-UK cruise ships such as [P&O’s] Britannia stay put, then that’s a huge increase in capacity in an area where there is already a challenge for capacity – particularly for cruises out of Southampton. This is only likely to put downward pressure on prices.

“We don’t want to get back to the really bad days of everybody hanging on to get last-minute deals. There’s always pressure on cruise out of the UK because there are only so many ports of call you can make,” he added.

“Fred Olsen has put a smaller ship in Southampton this year going up against Britannia and moved its bigger ship up to Newcastle to avoid having a bloodbath on prices.”

Graham Dullop, director of Cruise Club International, agreed: “It’s great for consumers because with so much competition, I think prices are likely to come down.

“Once you’ve got MSC as a main player, it will be interesting because they tend to sell on price. They’re more keenly priced than other lines – they have an aggressive pricing strategy, which won’t be good news for other lines.”