Thom Puiman’s first foray into “seacationing” was a cruise to nowhere in 2020.
The voyage was a socially distanced jaunt from Singapore out into worldwide waters with none stops — a short-term answer for an trade hit onerous by the Covid-19 pandemic.
However for Puiman, it sparked what has grow to be a long-term ardour. “It was, on the time, the one sense of normalcy for me, and I began loving taking cruises,” he says.
The 35-year-old know-how director, now based mostly in Bangkok, is a part of a brand new wave of cruise-goers that has emerged for the reason that pandemic disrupted world journey — a cohort lured, largely, by cheaper costs, complete facilities and comfort.
Folks working within the trade are all too conscious of the previous joke that cruise strains are stacked with “the newly wed, the overfed and the almost useless”.
However the demographics of passengers onboard the ever-expanding megaships have, in actuality, broadened dramatically, serving to the sector defy the gloom that has weighed down a lot of the journey trade in 2025 within the US and Europe.
Cruise executives say older Gen Zers, now of their late twenties, and millennials are more and more selecting ocean-based holidays, knocking down their common passenger age whilst populations within the core markets of Europe, Asia and North America become old.
Nearly a fifth of 25- to 34-year-olds surveyed by UK journey affiliation Abta had taken a cruise previously 12 months, up from lower than one in 20 in 2019.
That shift is the fruit of a deliberate marketing campaign from the large operators, notably Royal Caribbean Group, the world’s most useful cruise firm, which has “actually led this cost to get youthful shoppers on the ship and make cruising cool once more”, says Sharon Zackfia, an analyst at William Blair.
Royal Caribbean’s technique has helped the corporate, now price about $70bn, to sail effectively forward of its closest ocean-faring opponents, $35bn Carnival, and $9bn Norwegian Cruise Line. Its shares now commerce at greater than twice their pre-pandemic worth and are up round 10-fold from their lowest level on the peak of the Covid pandemic.
The cruise trade additionally seems, at the very least up to now, to have been insulated from the broader financial uncertainty affecting spending in different components of the journey sector. American households spent a median of 9 per cent extra on cruise holidays this September than in the identical month in 2024, in keeping with figures from Financial institution of America, whilst combination journey spending dropped 2 per cent, pushed by a droop in resort and airline bookings.
Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Norwegian have all raised their full-year earnings steering amid sustained reserving momentum all through 2025.
The scenario is a far cry from the trade’s devastation in the course of the pandemic, when 1000’s of crew members and passengers fell ailing, ships have been denied entry to ports and bookings collapsed.
At one level in February 2020, a single cruise ship — the Diamond Princess, operated by Carnival subsidiary Princess Cruises — accounted for greater than half of the world’s confirmed instances of Covid exterior China. Seven passengers died throughout a grim quarantine off the coast of Japan.
“I keep in mind folks have been debating whether or not we might ever cruise once more,” says 31-year-old influencer Emma Le Teace, who based the web site Cruising Isn’t Simply For Previous Folks, later rebranded as EmmaCruises, in 2016.
These days appear distant now. Cruises added nearly 10 per cent extra passengers 12 months on 12 months in 2024, hitting a report of just about 35mn.
However indicators are rising that the trade is starting to lose its post-pandemic momentum. Pent-up demand is susceptible to being tapped out, as shoppers pare again their vacation spending. On the identical time, a push amongst cruise operators to lift ticket costs may scare off inflation-weary shoppers.
After a protracted stretch of development, US journey brokers surveyed by Morgan Stanley this month reported weakening cruise bookings — suppressed by the federal government shutdown, elevated inflation and Hurricane Melissa.
Business figures are hopeful this can be a blip reasonably than the start of a development. “Enthusiasm for cruising stays excessive”, says analyst Jamie Rollo, “[but] some shoppers are adopting a wait-and-see perspective and reserving later.”
One of many largest elements attracting new company, notably youthful passengers, is the notion of worth.
The so-called low cost on the price of an evening on a cruise ship versus one in a vacation resort is wider in the present day than it was in 2019. That’s partly a perform of timing: resorts returned to normality from Covid sooner, and have been due to this fact in a position to start rising their costs earlier than cruise ships, which confronted heavy restrictions from the US Facilities for Illness Management till July 2022.
Revenues per cruise passenger have been up 24 per cent on 2019 within the second quarter of 2025, in keeping with firm experiences and figures from analytics group STR collated by Barclays Analysis. Resort charges within the US, in the meantime, climbed 34 per cent in the identical interval, whereas rooms within the Caribbean have been up 59 per cent.
Cruise operators have been “advertising into that [gap]”, says Barclays analyst Brandt Montour. Decrease costs have been, at the very least initially, “a solution to get our shoppers again to cruising”, says Gianni Onorato, chief govt of the privately held Swiss-Italian operator MSC Cruises.
Worth was definitely an element for Caitlin Nixon, a 28-year-old information analyst from the UK, who took her first cruise along with her husband final December. They paid £4,500, together with flights, for an all-inclusive two-week journey within the Caribbean on Tui’s Marella line.
“We needed to go see part of the world that we hadn’t explored but and appreciated the thought of attending to expertise a style of every place reasonably than spending the identical quantity to go to just one,” she says. “We discovered a great deal a few 12 months upfront in a sale and determined to only take the prospect that we’d get pleasure from it.”
Staffing is a major issue behind cruise liners’ potential to supply decrease prices. Greater than half of world cruise passengers are Individuals, however cruises would not have to recruit regionally and might entry specialised seafarer work permits, which usually value lower than hiring or bringing abroad employees into a rustic such because the US.
The massive operators don’t share exact figures, however analysts say the trade recruits closely from low-income nations such because the Philippines and Indonesia, and has been shielded from a lot of the wage inflation that has hit hospitality within the US and Europe.
“They’re competing with resorts, which have elevated costs because of increased labour prices,” says Montour. “Cruise strains profit from decrease working prices by drawing on labour from a worldwide pool.”
These cheaper labour prices have additionally enabled cruise operators to take care of, and even enhance, their pre-pandemic service ranges, says William Blair’s Zackfia. “Distinction that with land-based resorts [where] there have been some compromises made in 2020 — like ending turndown service — which will have continued.”
That perceived worth has additionally helped the trade stay buoyant at a time of rising insecurity, as shoppers search all-inclusive packages the place they’ll predict “precisely what they’re going to pay”, says Jan Freitag, an analyst at actual property data firm CoStar.
Cruise operators have an extra incentive for focusing on youthful passengers. “They’re actually attempting to seize clients early [because] there’s an incredible quantity of name loyalty inside the trade,” says Bob Levinstein, chief govt of on-line dealer CruiseCompete. “If Royal Caribbean can get you in as a younger grownup, that’s a long-term funding.”
Nixon, for one, is hooked on Tui’s Marella. “We’d undoubtedly go once more and undoubtedly with them,” she says.
The pandemic “was a blessing as a lot because it was a curse”, says Goldman Sachs analyst Lizzie Dove. “For the primary time ever [ . . . ] you couldn’t bodily cruise in order that they lastly had an opportunity to strategise and begin over.” That included the whole lot from overhauling cruise strains’ digital reserving platforms to rethinking ship design and constructing extra versatile itineraries.
The vessels themselves have additionally been rising over time to accommodate extra passengers and extra facilities. The dimensions of the world’s largest cruise ships has doubled since 2000. With a gross tonnage of about 250,000, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, which launched in 2024, is 5 instances heavier than the Titanic.
Operators have began deploying these newer, bigger ships on short-haul voyages. Royal Caribbean in August despatched its megaship Surprise of the Seas on three- and four-night cruises within the Bahamas from Miami. Rivals are replicating this technique: Carnival in August stated it might start providing short-haul sailings from Port Canaveral onboard its third-largest ship, the Mardi Gras, for the primary time from 2027.
These shorter routes are notably essential for first-time cruisers who worry “risking their complete trip”, says Dove. In addition they assist entice “working professionals [who] have the cash however are very time poor”, says Anna Nash, head of MSC’s luxurious cruise division Explora Journeys.
Current convert Puiman’s newest cruise was a four-day journey on Carnival’s Glory from Port Canaveral, Florida, which he tacked on to the tip of a enterprise journey in Orlando. He selected the most cost effective short-haul crusing on supply: “My purpose was to have some form of getaway: I didn’t care an excessive amount of concerning the port of calls or the precise ship.”
One other pillar of the trade’s post-pandemic refresh is a push to repeat the success of Royal Caribbean’s non-public island, Excellent Day at CocoCay, which reopened in 2019 following a $250mn redevelopment. That includes seashores, water parks and nature trails, CocoCay is accessed by a purpose-built pier that enables two megaships to dock concurrently.
The corporate has continued increasing its portfolio of personal locations, and final month introduced it might open a personal seashore membership in Santorini, its first in Europe. Carnival, in the meantime, is growing its $600mn purpose-built Celebration Key on the island of Grand Bahama, and Norwegian is including a two-ship pier to its non-public island Nice Stirrup Cay in order that it could possibly double customer numbers from 2026.
These developments will be extremely profitable. “It’s nice for the cruise strains as a result of they’re not paying port prices and so they’re in a position to seize onshore revenues that they wouldn’t seize in native cities,” says CruiseCompete’s Levinstein.
However the push to construct extra non-public locations has additionally been motivated by a rising world backlash in opposition to overtourism, says Levinstein. The French metropolis of Cannes this summer season voted to ban bigger cruise ships from docking instantly, replicating an earlier transfer by Venice, whereas Alaska plans to cap the variety of cruise passengers visiting its capital, Juneau, from subsequent 12 months.
MSC chief govt Onorato says cruise ships are “simple targets” due to their bodily measurement, however insists that cruises are “good methods to handle overtourism” as a result of they host guests offshore, reasonably than taking on city-centre properties, and might unfold out the timings of organised excursions, whereas non-public locations can scale back congestion in conventional hotspots.
Social media influencers resembling Le Teace have grow to be more and more essential for recruiting new clients. Working with influencers is “the brand new means of supplying data to younger adults”, says Onorato.
Visible platforms resembling Instagram and TikTok are notably efficient at overcoming “the most important obstacle to getting first-timers”, which is “getting them to grasp what cruise is all about”, says Carnival’s chief monetary officer, David Bernstein.
Executives, together with Royal Caribbean chief govt Jason Liberty and MSC’s Onorato, insist that there’s nonetheless loads of room to develop, notably because the trade stays a small element of the general journey market. Fewer folks took an ocean cruise in 2024 than visited Orlando, dwelling of Walt Disney World, in keeping with figures from the Cruise Traces Worldwide Affiliation and Go to Orlando.
Nonetheless, there are some rising indicators of unease. Shares in Royal Caribbean misplaced 20 per cent within the weeks after the corporate’s third-quarter earnings report in late October failed to satisfy buyers’ lofty expectations even because it raised annual revenue steering.
Liberty dismissed the steep drop in his firm’s shares, saying buyers have been merely “hoping for a unique stage of perfection” and that there was “a whole lot of noise across the [US] shopper that has nothing to do with us”.
Nonetheless, some consider this could possibly be a turning level for the investor enthusiasm that helped stretch Royal Caribbean’s valuation. The corporate’s newest report “does seemingly mark the tip of a protracted string of ever-higher estimate revisions throughout the cruise trade”, says Citi analyst James Hardiman.
Business executives, in the meantime, at the moment are more and more centered on driving increased returns from each passenger — a transfer that some analysts worry may dent the worth proposition that has helped entice new and youthful clients lately.
Elevating ticket costs is “a precedence”, says Carnival chief monetary officer Bernstein. “I truthfully consider that we needs to be charging greater than land-based resorts — but when we are able to simply shut the hole, we’re going to be doing extremely effectively.”
Bernstein just isn’t the one one pondering this fashion. “For all of the providers and facilities and actions that we convey [ . . . ] we really feel that for what we ship there’s a possibility for us to receives a commission extra,” says Royal Caribbean’s Liberty.
However financial pressures may make it powerful to pursue this goal of narrowing — and even eliminating — the so-called “low cost” to land-based resorts.
Barclays’ Montour stated in a word that cruise liners resembling Royal Caribbean have been now working “in a world the place all of leisure journey simply has much less pricing energy”. Going ahead, he added, the trade would most likely be unable to develop “fairly as robustly” because it had lately.
Liberty says Royal Caribbean’s company are “sturdy” financially. “They’ve nice jobs. They’ve nice steadiness sheets and financial institution accounts. They usually have a powerful want to trip and construct experiences and reminiscences with their family and friends,” he says. “However, we’re additionally not proof against what’s usually occurring within the setting.” Shoppers, he provides, could merely “not be prepared to pay like final 12 months”.
Graphic illustration by Ian Bott
