P&O Ferries and P&O Cruises – Are They Linked? (Ownership, Name, and History)

If you are taking a P&O cruise or planning a trip on a P&O ferry, you may be wondering if the two companies are linked. It’s more complicated than it first appears!

There is now no link between P&O cruises and P&O Ferries – different companies own them.

Are P&O Cruises and P&O Ferries Linked?

There is currently no link between P&O Cruises and P&O Ferries.

Both companies are owned by different larger companies and are operated separately.

P&O Cruises is owned by Carnival Corporation based in the USA, and P&O Ferries is owned by DP World based in Dubai.

	Founded	Owned By
P&O Ferries	2002	DP World (Dubai)
P&O Cruises	1977	Carnival Corporation

The photo above shows me with a P&O Cruises cruise ship, Iona. P&O’s cruise ships have distinctive Union Jack artwork on the hull.

P&O Ferries are much, much smaller and don’t have this design on the hull.

To learn more about the differences between ferries and cruise ships, check out this post:

5 HUGE Differences Between a Ferry and a Cruise Ship (Real Examples)

Who Are P&O Ferries?

P&O Ferries are a British company whose headquarters is in Dover, UK.

They have 20 ships and regularly sail across the English Channel, North Sea, and Irish Sea, transporting passengers, cars, and freight.

P&O Ferries – Customers: 10 Million Passengers Per Year
Cars: 1.6 Million

The P&O Group owns P&O Ferries and also owns P&O Group Travel, P&O Freight, P&O Ferrymasters, and P&O Heritage.

Who Are P&O Cruises?

P&O Cruises are a British cruise line whose headquarters is in Southampton, UK.

They have seven ships and sail worldwide, providing cruise vacations to passengers. P&O Cruises has roughly a 2% market share of all cruise passengers.

Passengers: 241,000 (During 2021, Sailing at Reduced Capacity)

Carnival Corporation, the largest cruise company in the world, owns P&O Cruises.

Carnival Corporation also owns the following cruise lines:

• Carnival Cruise Line
• Princess Cruises
• Costa Cruises
• AIDA Cruises
• Holland America
• Cunard Cruise Line
• P&O Cruises Australia
• Seabourn

To find out what it’s like to cruise with P&O, check out this video about my cruise on board P&O’s Arvia, the largest and newest ship in the fleet here:

History Of The P&O Group

In 1835 the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was founded.

In 1840 they began sailing to Asia and so renamed the company as “Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company”.

In 1918, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company bought 51% of the Oriental Line.

The two brands weren’t merged at this point but did later in the 1960s merge, forming the P&O Orient Line.

In the 1960s, P&O Orient Line began ferry services.

In the 1970s, P&O Bought Princess Cruises, and then in 1988, P&O bought Sitmar Cruises. This allowed them to expand into Australia.

They renamed this company “P&O Holidays” which was later became P&O Australia.

Before the year 2000, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company owned P&O Cruises in the UK, P&O Australia, and the ferry division of P&O.

In 2000, they decided to separate the cruise portion and formed “P&O Princess PLC”, a separate company.

In 2003, the Carnival Corporation bought P&O Princess for 3.5 billion pounds.

Carnival Corporation has announced it will retire its P&O Cruises Australia brand in March 2025, so P&O Australia will no longer exist.

The decision marks the end of the line for an iconic cruise brand in Australia and the Pacific.

As Carnival Corporation are such a big company, other ships owned by the Carnival parent company will sail in that area instead. This will save them money.

Timeline – A Brief History Of P&O Cruises:

The most important thing for the purposes of this article is that the company was taken over by Carnival Corporation in 2003.

To learn more about the history of P&O Cruises, I recommend checking out this brilliant book from maritime historian Chris Frame.

You can get it here (affiliate links): UK, USA.

P&O Ferries – Timeline

The below table shows a brief outline of the history of P&O Ferries.

The most important thing for the purposes of this article is that the company was sold in 2006 to DP World.

	P&O Ferries History
1960s	Established by P&O
1980s	Cross Channel Ferries Sold to European Ferries (Later Renamed)
1990s	P&O European Ferries split into 3 Parts
2006	P&O Group Sold to DP World (Later Dubai World)

Why Are P&O Ferries and P&O Cruises Both Called ‘P&O’?

The “P&O” in both companies’ names comes from the original “Peninsular and Oriental” Steam Navigation Company. Separate parent companies now own both.

The P&O Group created P&O Ferries and P&O Cruises.

They have since been sold to other companies but have kept their name and branding.

This caused problems for P&O Cruises in 2022 when passengers wrongly assumed that P&O Cruises were related to P&O Ferries.

In 2022, P&O Ferries made 800 of its workers redundant without warning. A move that was completely unrelated to P&O Cruises, but they received much of the backlash.

Cruising With P&O Cruises

I have taken multiple cruises with P&O Cruises, cruising onboard P&O’s Iona, Arvia, Ventura, Aurora and Britannia.

P&O provides brilliant value for money and as a result, I often recommend them to families and groups.

To find out how my cruise went onboard P&O’s oldest and smallest ship, Aurora below:

If you’d prefer to watch than read, check out the video I made on this subject here: Emma Cruises YouTube Channel.

Before You Go

Find out more about the history of the large American cruise line, Norwegian, here:

Norwegian Cruise Line History (Including Interesting Brochures from the 1960s)

Find out why ships are referred to as “She” here:

The Real Reason Ships Are Called “She” – Language, History, and Myth