cruises

Does it seem like everyone you know is going on a cruise? Here’s why

(This is a slightly different version of a story we wrote for NBC News)

Lots of people will be getting their sea legs this summer.

Ports have been packed with cruise ships over the last few years, as vacationers flock to ever larger vessels and operators race to accommodate a surge in post-pandemic bookings — many of them from first-time passengers. The industry expects even more this year.

Benjamin Xiang, a San Francisco-based flight attendant, went on his first cruise last August, setting aside his reservations about “cruise people” and a type of trip he’d imagined would be “not my travel style.”

Taking advantage of a Virgin Voyages promotion that let him use credit card points to cover the $2,500 bill, Xiang booked a weeklong, all-inclusive, adults-only cruise from Barcelona, with stops at Mallorca, Ibiza and along the French Riviera.

“I invited my best friend, we prepaid a $600 bar tab, and we were like, ‘We’ll just hang by the pool, read a book or something,’” said Xiang, 35. “Turned out we partied every single night and had a blast.”

He’s among the many cruise newbies who’ve helped power the industry’s recent growth. Some 27% of cruise passengers over the past two years have been first-timers, up 12% from the prior two-year period, according to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a trade group.

Will I go back? I think yes,” Xiang said. “Will I pay this time? Yes.”

Return cruisers on the upswing

That’s exactly what cruise operators are hoping for, and so far they’re getting it: 82% of all cruisers say they’ll book again, CLIA’s latest report found.

After welcoming 31.7 million passengers last year, 7% more than in 2019, the industry expects volumes to swell to 34.7 million by the end of 2024. Experts say a combination of newcomers, repeat bookers and younger travelers are powering the uptick.

Like Xiang, many first-time cruisers are groups of friends traveling together, said Jennifer Klaussen, who owns Sundari Travel in Malibu, California.

“Once they get on a cruise and realize it’s not what they thought it would be, they’re usually interested in future cruises and diverse destinations,” she said, adding that newer operators have managed to “reduce the stigma associated with cruising — that it’s only for the elderly.”

Passengers under age 40, including kids, made up around 42% of cruisegoers last year, up from 35% in 2019, according to CLIA. While the average age of a cruise customer is 46 industrywide, millennials now make up nearly the same share — 22% — as baby boomers and Gen Xers, who each comprise 24%.

“The cruise industry has been hard at work to launch new ships and experiences that are attractive to a younger, newer demographic,” said Colleen McDaniel, editor-in-chief of Cruise Critic, “whether that’s a big, new ship with eye-catching attractions for families or more bucket-list-worthy experiences like sailings in the Galapagos or Antarctica.”

Amenities don’t hurt either, said Nathan Rosenberg, chief brand officer at Virgin Voyages, which began sailing only in 2021, as the cruise industry rebounded from the pandemic. “Millennials and Gen Z love the fact that everything is included. Think meals foodies would love, tips covered, Wi-Fi to stay connected and a ton of fitness classes,” he said.

Vessels are getting bigger to handle the growing demand.

In January, Royal Caribbean Group launched Icon of the Seas  — currently the world’s largest cruise ship, with 20 decks, 40 restaurants and room for more than 7,000 passengers and 3,000 crew members.

The company, meanwhile, reported a 16% increase in new cruisegoers between this year and last across its various cruise lines. Nearly half of all Royal Caribbean guests are millennials or younger, CEO Jason Liberty said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

Similarly, Norwegian Cruise Lines CEO Harry Sommer told CNBC earlier this month, “We appeal obviously to older customers, but millennial and Gen Z is the fastest-growing segment of our cruising right now.”

Cruises generally aren’t cheap, though, and Sommer noted that the company’s target customer is middle- or upper-income. As consumer spending cools down across much of the economy, Americans are adjusting their summer vacation plans to fit their budgets.

The share of travelers put off by steep prices hit 32% in Deloitte’s annual summer travel survey, up sharply from 24% last year. But more affluent vacationers still seem eager to shell out on everything from first-class airfare to luxury train trips, as the industry continues to push premium offerings.

“More higher-income travelers are headed to cruises,” whereas “lower-income travelers are going camping,” the Deloitte report, released Tuesday, said. (“RV trips are up across the board,” it added.)

Good prices and all-inclusive packages cruise packages are welcome

That doesn’t mean cruise passengers aren’t paying attention to price.

Jaclyn Groh will be sailing around the Caribbean on her first cruise in March 2025. The 34-year-old therapist and social work professor at Ohio State University in Columbus typically takes her family on boat trips on a lake, beach visits, “and of course the occasional Disney adventure for the kiddos,” said Groh.

While some of her friends have done family cruises, she’s never been interested in the largest cruise ships because they seem “overwhelming.” But in shopping around for a vacation next year for just her and her husband, Groh said her travel agent’s description of the packages available won her over.

The smaller Explora II vessel she opted for has a “boutique feel that we love,” she said. And it’s priced about the same as the resort in Curaçao where the couple will be celebrating their 10th anniversary this fall. That week on land will run about $6,500, while the cruise comes to about $6,700.

“The price seems very reasonable for all of the inclusions and yet with the cruise we will get to experience so many new locations and excursions,” said Groh, who’s looking forward to “a perfect combination of resting in luxury and adventuring.”

Travel Tidbits: Fly to Paris, cruise the Seine

The Stuck at The Airport cruise team recently sailed as a guest on the Viking Radgrid on Viking’s Paris & the Heart of Normandy itinerary.

Here are some snaps and notes from the trip in case you’re thinking of heading that way once all the stories start flowing about the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics and the June 4th anniversary marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings along the Normandy coast during World War II.

We took advantage of a day and half docked in Paris to join a walking tour, visit a museum, ride the Paris Metro and take a food tour during which we drank wine and ate cheese and macarons, of course, but also spied some other edible treasures.

A few stops to savor

The village of La Roche-Guyon, about an hour from Paris on the Seine, is home to Château de La Roche-Guyon, a curious 12-century castle that’s been transformed over several centuries.

Fans of Vincent Van Gogh make sure to visit Auvers-Sur-Oise, the town where the artist painted and drew 74 pictures in a fervish 70 days and where he is buried alongside his brother, Theo.

Rouen, France

Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France, was burned at the stake in a marketplace in Rouen, France in 1431. But the town is also known for the Notre Dame of Rouen Cathedral, a much-photographed 14th-century astronomical clock, museums, and more.

Normandy: Caen Memorial Museum, American Cemetery, Omaha Beach

Many book this cruise for the full-day excursion that includes a visit to the Caen Memorial Museum, the Normandy American Cemetery and the Omaha Beach Memorial.

The museum is immersive, with sections (often very graphic) detailing events the causes, consequences, key players and decisive battles of World War II, the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy.

It is shocking and difficult to see some of the images and read many of the documented stories in this museum, but we were heartened by the sight of this crystal radio receiver hidden inside a vegetable can that and used by a French Resistance fighter.

The cemetery contains the graves of 9,387 military dead and, On the Walls of the Missing, an additional 1,557 names, with rosettes marking the names of those since recovered and identified.

And at Omaha Beach, the Les Braves (The Brave) memorial by Anilore Banon was installed in 2004 as the offiical sculpture of 60th anniversary commemoration of the World War II Normandy landings.

Way slower than flying

The Stuck at the Airport cruise review team has been on assignment on a ship for the past two weeks making our first transatlantic voyage from Rotterdam, The Netherlands to New York City.

We’ve been on Holland America Line’s Rotterdam, which is recreating the line’s very first voyage, which took place exactly 150 years ago.

These days, of course, flying from Europe to the United States is the way to go. And the journey, by plane, is perhaps 7 hours. If the flight takes much longer, modern-day travelers start complaining.

On this journey, though, the crossing has taken 7 days.

It’s always thrilling to see the view of New York City when landing at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) or Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).

But early this foggy morning, sailing past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island is an entirely different, and oddly emotional, experience.

Museum Monday highlights from Viking.TV

Courtesy Kon-Tiki Museum

We’re setting off for Iceland in a few weeks to join Viking for one of their Welcome Back cruises. So we have been poking around the company’s website.

One impressive resource there for the general public is Viking.TV. It was created in response to the pandemic and this channel is chock full of videos about art, culture, history, food, music, architecture, and destinations around the world.

Our favorite feature is Museum Monday. Stop in and you’ll see that there are now more than 60 videos about museums and collections. including some wonderful behind the scene tours.

You’ll find your own favorites, but here are a few of the videos that captured our attention and our imagination this week. We started with a visit to the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway, home to Thor Heyerdahl’s original Kon-Tiki raft and the papyrus boat Ra II.

We also went down a rabbit hole at London’s British Museum learning about how prepared the museum for lockdown and toured the collection of the Alaskan objects at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, England.

World’s first hybrid electric-powered cruise ship arrives in North America

When it comes to the environment and sustainability, cruise ships and many cruise ship operators get failing grades when it comes to controlling carbon emissions, recycling and treating water, waste and sewage.

But thanks to new technology and the scrutiny of passengers, government agencies and environmental groups, the tide is beginning to turn in favor of the earth.

Norwegian cruise operator Hurtigruten is on the leading edge of that effort with the world’s first hybrid electric-powered expedition ship, which recently made history as the first ship of its kind to traverse the Northwest Passage.

The 530-passenger MS Roald Amundsen is named for the Norwegian explorer who was the first person to navigate the Northwest Passage by boat and the first person to cross Antarctica and reach the South Pole.

Hurtigruten’s sustainability policies include a ban on single-use plastics and the goal of being totally emission-free within 20 years. The Roald Amundsen moves the company towards that goal by featuring a hybrid operating system that uses large banks of batteries to supplement the power of the main engines, which run on low sulfur marine gas oil.

“Excess, unneeded energy from the engines is stored in the batteries and when the engine needs extra energy, we draw it back from the batteries and feed it into the engines,” Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam told NBC.

That reduces fuel usage, allows the engines to operate at their optimum levels and lowers CO2 emissions by 20 percent.  

The ship also has the option to run on battery power alone for limited periods, during which time it uses no fuel and creates zero emissions.           

Charging the batteries from the ship’s excess energy is essential, said Skjeldam, because there are currently no power charging stations for ships to plug into in port.

The company’s next hybrid ships will be different, he says.

Those ships will have plug-in capability and be able to recharge at power stations Skjeldam expects to be set up along the Norwegian coast and elsewhere.

The world’s first hybrid-powered cruise ship set sail from Norway in July and is now in Vancouver, B.C. preparing for a season of expedition cruises in Antarctica. Hurtigruten will debut a second hybrid-powered ship, the MS Fridtjof Nansen, in 2020. A third, yet unnamed hybrid-powered ship will be delivered in 2021.

Hurtigruten’s next generation of hybrid ships, along with a half-dozen of its retrofitted existing ships, will run on a mixture of battery power, liquified natural gas (LNG) and biogas made from organic waste, such as dead fish.

“Bio-gas is like a Kinder Egg of fuel; it is like those chocolate eggs with treats inside,” said Skjeldam. “Passengers on our ships will eat fish. The waste from that fish and from the fish farming industry will go into a production plant that generates gas for our ships and creates fertilizer for the agriculture industry.”

Skjeldam says that, for now, Hurtigruten’s hybrid ships and its commitment to far-reaching sustainability practices is an expensive proposition.

“We expect the technology to be cheaper in the future. But we know passengers don’t want to visit beautiful, pristine places on an operator that is not taking the nature they sail to seriously. Some cruise lines say they’re green, but passengers can tell the difference.”

Other cruise lines do their part – or not

The world’s largest cruise company, U.S.-based cruise ship operator Carnival Corp., was in court this week to address charges that it continues to violate environmental laws by discharging plastics, food, or “gray water” into protected areas.

“Compliance, environmental protection, safety — it’s the first thing,” Arnold Donald told the court. “Without it, we don’t have a business.”

On the positive side, though, Norwegian Cruise Lines Partners recently announced that it is on target to reach its goal of replacing all single-use plastic bottles across its fleet by Jan. 1, 2020.

Lindblad Expeditions announced its intention to become a carbon-neutral company starting this year by making investments to offset 100 percent of its emissions.

And the global cruise industry is working as a group to meet a goal the Cruise Lines International Association announced in 2018 of reducing the rate of carbon emissions across the industry fleet by 40 percent by 2030.

(My story about the world’s first hybrid electric-powered cruise ship first appeared on NBC.com)