Are you planning a cruise this year? You’re not alone. Here’s where ships are headed

The ships are bigger — one based at PortMiami has 18 passenger decks, seven swimming pools and a water slide park.

The trips are more ambitious — one vessel left downtown Miami in December for 274 days while another will depart Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale this December and visit five continents.

Viking’s World Voyage I, after departing Port Everglades, will visit Santa Barbara, California, sail up and down the Pacific Ocean, stop in Java, Indonesia, traverse the South China Sea, then visit Ho Chi Minh City and dock for three days in Yangon, Myanmar, just a sample of its itinerary.

Then there are the companies and countries not previously associated with cruising that are looking to get their feet wet: Ritz Carlton, Japanese conglomerate Mitsui, even the Saudi Arabia government.

The global cruise industry, for which South Florida is a capital, has not only recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic and its foggy aftermath, it continues to set one record after another. But are cruises giving travelers what they want, with bigger ships and new ports?

One thing is for sure: The cruise industry is navigating uncharted waters.

Record numbers of cruise passengers

Travelers, many leaving from Miami and Fort Lauderdale, are back on the high seas. Last year, more than 31 million people across the world took an oceangoing cruise, an all-time high. That’s a huge increase over the 20 million in 2022, but also exceeded the pre-pandemic all-time high in 2019.

And in 2024, another record is expected: More than 34 million are estimated to hit the seas, and nearly 40 million million by 2027, according to a new report from the trade group Cruise Lines International Association, known as CLIA.

While the growth is global, South Florida has a captain’s seat. PortMiami, Florida’s largest port, set a record for passengers, more than 7 million, during fiscal year 2023. That exceeded the 6.8 million passengers in fiscal year 2019.

The record activity is reflected in several new ships sailing out of PortMiami, including Oceania’s Vista, Carnival Cruise Line Costa Venezia and Norwegian Cruise Line Norwegian Viva.

Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas arrived in January at what will be its home port. The world’s largest cruise ship has more natural light and space on board with ocean views than its previous ships. Beds can even be adjusted to face the water.

Port Everglades is also growing and serving as a formidable competitor. In fiscal year 2023, the port drew just over three million passengers. While below its high-water mark of 3.9 million, the Fort Lauderdale port expects to reach that volume in 2025, the port CEO at the time told the Miami Herald last year.

In November, Disney Cruise Line started sailing from Port Everglades. The Disney Dream is based at the port and features shows with popular Disney, Marvel and Star Wars characters and meet-and-greets at sea, seeking to draw children and families.

Cruises, long seen as post-retirement travel, are luring newcomers. According to the CLIA report, 27% of cruise passengers the past two years were new to cruising. Carriers like Virgin Voyages, with U.S. headquarters in Plantation and a new chic terminal at PortMiami, are catering to young adults.

The average age of a cruiser in the past year was 46, and the majority of cruises were Gen Z or Millennials, the two youngest groups.

The future of cruising

The type of passenger cruising combined with the continued overall growth “is unprecedented,” Josh Weinstein, President, CEO and Chief Climate Officer at Carnival Corp., said from the stage at the Seatrade Cruise Global annual meeting at the Miami Beach Convention Center in April. He expects that to continue.

“Our bookings for 2025 are better than they were last year at this point for 2024,” he said.

Some industry analysts, economists and academics had previously forecast a surge in demand for cruises in 2022 or early 2023 because so many people felt they lost time during the pandemic. But they thought the numbers would eventually subside as people got back to routine.

Yet, “the concept for pent-up demand for cruising is gone,” Weinstein said.

Other post-pandemic trends, like spending time with family and friends, are helping to boost cruising.

“The appreciation of building memories with your friends and families coming out of COVID is at extraordinary high levels,” Harry Sommer, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, said at the Miami Beach conference. He noted that cruisers sharing social photos of their families is good for advertising.

Ships becoming larger is increasingly appealing to multi-generation families because of the variety of activities.

“They are trying to include more experiences and more facilities: more dining, more entertainment, more shopping, spas and entertainment,” said Stewart Chiron, a longtime cruise expert who writes as The Cruise Guy.

“The future is incredibly bright,” Sommer said.

And the cruise companies want to keep it going. Norwegian Cruise Line said this month it had ordered eight new cruise ships. They will be delivered between 2026 and 2036.

Meanwhile, another cruise line carrier, Viking, recently has filed for an initial public offering. The company did not specify number or shares or size of IPO, but its prospectus showed a $1.86 billion loss in 2023 on revenues of $4.7 billion in 2023, up from $3.2 billion in 2022.

Viking’s World Voyage I, a 180-day trip, departs from Port Everglades in December. The line’s expedition ships, Octantis, Polaris, and Mars, also are based in Fort Lauderdale.

One likely advantage for South Florida’s ports is that the United States keeps driving demand for cruises.

The number of passengers worldwide increased 6.8% compared to 2019, but the U.S. saw a 19% rise over that period. About 16.9 million people took cruises last year. That number dwarfed second-place Germany with 2.5 million. Meanwhile, Brazil grew by 30% and Italy grew by 24%, with Europe seeing a 6.5% increase.

The one place that did not share in the growth is China, which had 157,000 cruisers, a 92% fall from 1.9 million in 2019.

“That’s where we’re seeing that major lag, in Asia,” said Chris Mastrippolito, director of global research for CLIA.

Where are cruise ships heading?

Even with all the choices, people are still taking cruises mostly to the Caribbean.

In 2023, the Caribbean/Bahamas/Bermuda run was tops worldwide with 12.9 million visitors, 7.3% higher than in 2019 and nearly one million more visitors.

The Mediterranean grew by 23% to 5.5 million visitors. The two biggest gainers by percentage were South America which increased by 34% and Alaska by 36%.

Not all signs point to continued euphoria for cruise companies. Some industry experts see slower growth in the coming years.

For example, the number of ships increased by 3.4% from last year, but that was less than the 5% and 4.1% increases in the two prior years, according to data from Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company.

Caution signs for the cruise industry

Cruise companies have ordered 51 new ships this year, an increase from the COVID years.

Yet that number is still less than half of the industry’s peak year, in 2019, when 125 new ships were ordered.

“I don’t think we’re going to see 2019 levels ... for a while,” said Christian Savelli, director of cruise analytics for research firm Tourism Economics “We’re going to see a lull, a flattening of the supply.”

A ‘disconnect’ between passengers and cruising?

But are cruise companies offering what passengers want?

A survey commissioned by Tourism Economics found that while 11% fewer cruisers prefer larger vessels, with more than 3,000 passengers, 15% more passengers like small vessels, with fewer than 500 passengers.

Savelli described that as a “potential disconnect between cruisers preference for small and mid-size cruise ships with current and future fleet mix.”

Global unrest and tension and the ongoing war in the Middle East are also likely to affect where cruisers can go. Days after Iran attacked Israel, Norwegian canceled at least 14 cruises on 7 ships in 2025.

Several of those canceled trips, on the Norwegian Epic, Norwegian Sky, and Norwegian Viva, were due to security concerns. A March 28 letter to passengers said: “We have been monitoring the situation in Israel, and despite our best hopes that it would de-escalate, we have made the decision to alter published itineraries that transit through and around the region.”

Since the terror group Hamas attacked Israel and the Gaza war started in October, cruise companies have been canceling trips to the Middle East.

Still, one thing cruise passengers can count on is having more options. All three of Norwegian ships headed to the Red Sea and near Israel in 2025 were re-routed, one of them to the Caribbean, and ahead of its schedule.

Then there is Puerto Rico which is expecting to upgrade its terminals after receiving a $100 million investment from Global Ports Holding so that it can accommodate big ships. Unconventional players like Ritz Carlton Yacht Collection and Japan’s Mitsui Ocean Cruises already offer cruises and are growing.

Saudi Arabia is looking to start a cruise industry through Cruise Saudi, a government-owned company funded by the country’s sovereign wealth fund. It currently has three ports operational and hopes to have 10 up and running by 2030, Lars Clasen, CEO of Cruise Saudi, said in an interview.

The firm also expects to have its first own cruise ship sail later this year, he estimated, with about a 3,000-passenger capacity. “What we’re doing is — it’s a first — we are developing a product for the Arabian market,” he said.

Cruise Saudi also has a joint venture with the luxury hotel brand Aman Hotel and Resorts to develop a ship for about 100 guests. Aman is owned by Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin, who separately is developing a new hotel in Miami Beach.

Then there is a more traditional carrier, from Europe, looking where others are not. The MSC Group is hoping to see a resurgence in China and looking to increase number of cruises there, its executive chairman of the cruise division at MSC Group Pierfrancesco Vago, said this month at the Seatrade conference in Miami Beach.

“I don’t think people are building ships just for the sake of it,” he said. “Ships are mobile and can go to where the demand is.”