Is it a boat? Is it a plane? No, it’s the world’s biggest non-current asset?

I just read that Royal Caribbean have recently entered the World’s largest passenger ship – the Oasis of the Seas – into service.  It is enormous, with elevators to carry passengers up and down the 18 passenger decks.  To my old fashioned tastes, it looks rather like a floating housing estate, but I think that’s just age.

Whilst watching an online tour of the ship, I found myself being rather accountant-like about it.  What’s it’s design life and is its useful life going to be shorter?  Do cruise ships go out of fashion before they become too unreliable to sail?  Will it generate more revenues in the early years than the later years?  So should sum of digits/reducing balance depreciation be used instead of straight line?  Of the cost of £800 million to build it, how much is down to the hull of the ship itself and how much to the decoration?  The decoration is no doubt ideal for its target customers just now, but it’s bound to look hopelessly dated in twenty years’ time.  So what’s their policy for “unbundling” the ship into separate components and depreciating each over a different life?

There is much criticism of ship owners sending their decommissioned ships to developing countries to be broken.  As a cruise company, this ship will no doubt not suffer that fate, as to do so would damage the company’s public relations.  So there might be a constructive obligation to decommission the ship in about 30 years’ time at a loss.  Have they recognised that as a liability and discounted to present value?  They should have done, because IAS 37 requires it.

Finally, the interview with the CEO of the company starts by admitting that 2009 has been “horrible” and 2010 doesn’t look much better.  Evidence of impairment right at launch perhaps?  IAS 36 only allows companies to project revenues five years into the future when valuing assets (unless an extension to this period can be justified). Will the global recession be over by then?

So whilst other people see a big ship, I see a floating cocktail of accounting and audit issues.  Is this normal?