Wowza! This new New York-based cruise ship is bigger than the city's biggest hotel

What's the biggest hotel in New York City?

If you guessed the famously massive New York Marriott Marquis near Times Square, with its 1,971 rooms, you would have been right ... on Wednesday.

But as of Thursday, there's a new giant in town, albeit one that you won't be able to access every day. It'll be coming and going.

It's the MSC Meraviglia, the first cruise ship from fast-growing MSC Cruises to be based in in the Big Apple. One of the biggest cruise ships in the world, it has a whopping 2,224 rooms — edging out the New York Marriott Marquis' room count by a comfortable margin.

We know MSC Meraviglia is not a "hotel" in the strictest definition. But cruise ships essentially are just hotels that float. When MSC Meraviglia is docked at its new home base in New York City, something that will happen every few days year-round, it'll be hard to argue it's not the biggest lodging establishment in the Five Boroughs.

Eighteen decks high and more than 1,000 feet long, MSC Meraviglia can hold about 5,700 passengers with every berth filled, and it sails with 1,500-plus crew members.That means that, on any given day, it could have more than 7,000 people on board.

The arrival of MSC Meraviglia in New York City marks a significant milestone for MSC Cruises, a Europe-based brand that, until now, has only offered sailings in North America out of the Port of Miami and Port Canaveral. MSC Meraviglia has been based out of Port Canaveral until now.

The arrival comes as the battle for cruisers in the New York area heats up, with rival lines such as Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line deploying some of the newest and biggest ships to the market.

Related: New Norwegian Prima to sail from New York, Texas and Florida

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MSC Meraviglia will depart Saturday on its first sailing from New York — a seven-night voyage to Florida and the Bahamas. It'll then run a year-round schedule of six- to 11-night voyages to the Caribbean, Bermuda, New England and Canada.

When it's in New York, the ship will dock at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which is in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The new MSC Cruises sailings out of New York will include:

• Seven- and eight-night voyages to the Bahamian port of Nassau and Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve, the line's private island in the Bahamas.
• Six-night trips to Bermuda that feature three days docked at King's Wharf.
• Ten and 11-night sailings to New England and Canada that bring calls at Boston; Portland, Maine; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia; and Saint John, New Brunswick. The 11-night itinerary also includes a stop at Newport, Rhode Island.

MSC Cruises is joining Royal Caribbean and Norwegian in basing ships in the New York area year-round for sailings to the above regions. Other lines that sail regularly out of New York-area ports on a seasonal basis include Carnival Cruise Line, Disney Cruise Line and Celebrity Cruises. Cunard Line also has a major presence in New York City with regular transatlantic sailings from New York to the United Kingdom.

MSC Cruises has been rapidly building its footprint in North America in an effort to woo more Americans. In 2017, MSC Cruises only had a single vessel based in North America. It now has two vessels based in Miami, one based in Port Canaveral and one based in New York.

All of the North America-based ships are marketed heavily to Americans.

Founded in 1989 in Naples, Italy, and now based in Switzerland, MSC Cruises in recent years has been building big, resort-like vessels that compete with the biggest ships from the likes of Royal Caribbean and Norwegian. It currently operates seven of the 20 biggest cruise ships in the world.

The line is also in the midst of building the largest cruise terminal in North America, at PortMiami. It'll be able to accommodate three of the line's largest ships at once.

Note that MSC Meraviglia isn't the first cruise ship with more rooms than the New York Marriott Marquis to dock in New York City. On days when Norwegian's Norwegian Epic is in town, for instance — something that will happen just once this year — it surpasses the New York Marriott Marquis in size. Norwegian Epic has about 2,100 rooms.

In addition, MSC Meraviglia will be eclipsed in size among cruise ships sailing out of the New York area on May 7 when Royal Caribbean's giant Oasis of the Seas returns to the city for a short-term series of sailings through October. The giant ship, which has more than 2,700 rooms, began sailing seasonally out of New York in 2021.

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