The biggest - and, with a $1.4 billion price tag, the most expensive - cruise ship ever to visit New Zealand will call in to the Bay of Islands in January 2017.
While the megaliner Ovation of the Seas is only a few metres longer than the Queen Mary 2, which made its maiden visit to Northland in 2010, it carries almost twice as many passengers and is 20,000 tonnes heavier.
At 348m long, it would tower 20m above Auckland's Sky Tower if you could place it on its end. Its total of 6500 passengers and crew is almost four times the population of Paihia, the town it will call in to.
The Ovation's visit is part of an ongoing boom in the cruise ship industry.
Currently 54 cruise ships with up to 105,000 passengers are scheduled to visit the Bay of Islands in the 2015-16 season. That would break the record set in the Rugby World Cup season of 2011-12 when 52 ships visited with 78,000 passengers.