History
AIDA Cruises was founded in the early 1960s as Deutsche Seereederei. The Rostock, Germany, based firm was privatized following the unification of Germany, and was renamed DSR. DSR bought out Seetours of Bremen and the line marketed cruises under the Seetours name. The company underwent a further rebranding on 1 January 1998, when a company named Arkona Touristik took over the cruise branch of DSR.
In 2000, P&O Cruises bought a 51% share of the company, with Arkona Touristik retaining the other 49%. The company formed by this partnership was AIDA Cruises, taking the name of the 1996 newbuild. The following year, P&O Princess Cruises bought out Arkona Touristik's shares in AIDA and Seetours, and in 2003 a merger between P&O Princess and Carnival Corporation formed Carnival Corporation & plc. Finally, in 2004, Seetours was rebranded as AIDA Cruises, and the company has since gained a large following in the German-language cruise market.
In an effort to do something that was unique in the industry, they reintroduced the vertical bow on 2016's AIDAprima. In late 2018, AIDAnova became the first cruise ship to be powered entirely by LNG. The first of nine Excellence class ships, she was forward-thinking and a definitive successor to AIDAprima.
AIDA's anticipated third Helios-class ship, designated by builder Meyer Werft as S.717, was transferred to Carnival on 23 June 2021. This was likely done to grow the number of berths in Carnival's fleet, as that same day it was also announced that a Costa ship would be transferred to Carnival.