A new merger between two of the world's biggest cruise lines agreed on Friday may hinder Government's aim of not becoming too reliant on one company, a shipping expert has claimed.

P&O Princess Cruises has accepted a $5.4 billion takeover offer from Carnival - despite spending much of the past year fighting off Carnival after originally agreeing to a "merger of equals" with Royal Caribbean Cruises.

Carnival, the world's biggest cruise operator, upped its original offer by around $560 million to $5.4 billion, ending a corporate battle between the world's largest three cruise lines - all of which serve or have used Bermuda.

According to Donald MacPherson of Bermuda shipping agents John S. Darrell, the merger may make it more difficult for Government to kept up the policy of "not putting all its eggs in one basket".

"This merger makes Carnival the biggest cruise line in the world by quite some way," he told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

"The philosophy has been not to put too many eggs in one basket but the market may determine them to think otherwise.

"I don't think the Government will have that many choices when it comes to ships because we are already limited in what we can accept because of size."

Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises are in the same company, providing Bermuda with regular callers, the Zenith, Horizon, and Nordic Empress.

Princess Cruises provided the Pacific Princess, but that leaves Bermuda for the last time tomorrow after being sold off and will not be replaced by another Princess ship.

And Carnival, whose newest ship Legend called into Bermuda over the weekend on her maiden voyage, is making 11 trips to the Island next year in two ships on a one year contract that is open for renewal.