WORLDWIDE cruising growth will continue throughout the next decade according to senior industry leader Jan Swartz, with more than 100 new ships to bring an extra 270,000 beds between now and 2027.
At the World’s Leading Cruise Lines Next Wave Summit aboard Majestic Princess on Fri, the Group President of Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia & New Zealand gave a keynote speech in which she dismissed concerns that growth was unsustainable.
“Can the cruise industry continue growing like this?” Swartz asked.
“We say ‘absolutely’,” she said.
“Today, only a limited number of shipyards in the world are capable of building these great cruise ships, and even at full capacity their combined output only could increase supply 3-5% per year.
“So what this means is that we’re looking at measured steady capacity growth, not an explosion.”
Swartz compared the growing cruise sector to the tourism capacities of individual cities, noting the entire global industry was still smaller than the overall tourism figures of destinations like New York or Paris.
“I was recently in Orlando, Florida, last week and realised that the entire global cruise industry is only equal to one third of the annual visitors to Orlando,” she said.
“Closer to home, about 1.3 million Australians took an ocean cruise last year, and that’s roughly equivalent to the number of overnight visitors in Tasmania, so clearly there’s room to grow.”
Swartz said travel agents continued to play a crucial role “as matchmakers with guests”.
“In the past five years, the amount of commission earned by travel agents in this region has nearly doubled,” she said.
See more in Cruise Weekly.
Source: traveldaily