Fall / Winter, ‘92-’93, Cruise Guide : Special Issue : The Cruise Boom : Everybody’s Getting on Board

“You’ll never catch me on a cruise ship” is a line we hear sometimes from strangers when they find out we write about cruises.

And we’re always tempted to reply, “Oh yeah?”

We remember Doug, the World War II Navy veteran who said he spent four years in the South Pacific being seasick “and nobody was ever going to get me on a boat again.” Then his wife took a cruise to Mexico with some friends, had a grand time, and came home and announced that she was going on other cruises, with or without him. She also convinced him that passenger ships ride quite smoothly these days, thanks to stabilizers that reduce the rolling motion. By the time we met them on an Alaska cruise, Doug was a veteran of a seven-day cruise in the Caribbean and was planning a romantic sailing for the two of them to Tahiti the following year.

Then there were Debbie and Michael, a stressed-out pair in their 30s whose travel agent recommended they take a cruise to really get away and unwind. Far from convinced, they came aboard a Caribbean cruise ship lugging bags full of magazines and books and a backgammon set “because we were afraid we wouldn’t have anything to do.” A week later, when they disembarked, tanned and tired from learning windsurfing, snorkeling and beach-collecting at every island port of call, they were relaxed. The books were unread, the backgammon never unpacked, and they had a date for another cruise the following year with a couple who shared their dinner table.

After more than 10 years of taking 12 to 24 cruises a year, we’ve seen a tremendous change in the passengers aboard ships. A decade ago, the typical passengers were, as one cynical cruise line executive used to quip, “the very old and their parents.”

Now we see honeymooners, families with small children, single parents and lots of couples and singles from a wide range of income brackets. Today’s high school and college graduates often get a three-day cruise as a graduation gift, singles cruise to meet other singles, and families set sail to have “quality time” together.

While the big, glittering megaships that carry as many as 2,000 passengers each attract younger passengers and first-timers, many veteran cruisers are looking for smaller ships, preferring a more intimate ambience.

A particularly frustrating experience on megaships such as Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norway (2,044 passengers) and Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas, Monarch of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas (2,280, 2,353 and 2,354 passengers each) is meeting someone you really feel a rapport with but forgetting to get their names and cabin numbers. You can count on never seeing them again the entire cruise. We used to advise friends going from their cabin on the Norway down to the spa to take a compass and lunch.

The ultra-deluxe and upscale ships such as Seabourn, Sea Goddess and Royal Viking are getting big attention in the market as well--although not often sailing full, due, perhaps, to the weak economy. They’re attracting passengers who ordinarily wouldn’t think of taking a cruise, very upscale young couples, for example, who are out to buy a top-drawer vacation.

The new 1992 market profile study from CLIA (Cruise Lines International Assn., the professional organization to which most cruise lines belong) shows that 65% of cruise passengers traveled their most recent cruise with their spouses, 28% with friends, 14% with another family member, 9% with children and 4% alone. (The totals add up to more than 100% because some of those surveyed indicated more than one travel mode.) There’s no question cruisers are getting younger. Some 46%, nearly half, of all new cruisers last year were between 25 and 40, according to the study. (CLIA characterizes the new cruiser as someone over 18 who has taken a first cruise since 1989.) The study shows that 74% of the new cruisers are married and 47% have children in their household, although only 28% normally vacation with their children.

Charter and special-interest cruises--what the industry calls “affinity cruises”--are another lure to new audiences. There are special sailings for chocoholics, soap opera fans, born-again Christians, opera buffs, gays and lesbians and spa enthusiasts. A friend of ours swears he saw a four-color brochure put out recently by a travel agency promoting a clothing-optional charter cruise for nudists, promising lots of freedom and fresh air.

Singles cruises are often a hit-or-miss proposition, with more misses and fewer hits because women, as a rule, outnumber men. To address this problem, Windjammer Barefoot Cruises, which operates a fleet of vintage sailing ships in the Caribbean, has developed a series of singles sailings that carry precisely 50% single men and 50% single women, according to director of sales Glenn Dean.

“We’re fortunate because we have a really good mix. It tends to be a little younger, not to the point where it’s all a bunch of 20-year-olds, more like 30 to 40,” Dean says.

There also used to be an idea that one had to be rich to go to sea on vacation. Now, CLIA says, 34% of all new cruisers have relatively modest incomes of $20,000-$40,000 a year.

This is partly due to the short-cruise boom--three- and four-day sailings that have lured new cruisers with cheaper fares and briefer itineraries. But even 10 years ago, especially on three-day sailings, we recall meeting people of modest means--letter carriers, secretaries, waitresses, teachers. We particularly remember a couple in their 20s, who, back in 1984, were taking their first cruise on the Azure Seas from Los Angeles to Ensenada over a weekend. She worked bagging groceries in a supermarket, and he was a bus mechanic for the Rapid Transit District. As they stood at the rail holding hands and watching the sunset, they were already planning for a longer cruise next time.

The perception that cruises are expensive compared to other vacations apparently is beginning to erode as well. CLIA’s study--the result of telephone interviews by an outside research firm with 2,000 adults nationwide who have annual incomes of $20,000 or more--found that, among people who have taken both a cruise and a resort vacation on land in the past five years, 51% termed cruises “a good value for the money,” while only 28% considered the resort vacation a good value. (The study sample was composed of half men and half women, according to a CLIA spokesman, but was random concerning whether or not interviewees had ever been on a cruise.)

Veteran cruise executive Bob Dickinson, who recently completed a two-year stint as chairman of CLIA, believes one reason for the tremendous growth in cruising is that a cruise costs less than a comparable land vacation. “Once you factor in all the free entertainment, free meals and snacks, 24-hour room service, discos and spas available on a ship, a comparable vacation for the same length of time on land would cost 30% to 40% more on the average,” he argues.

Regarding the demographics and the financial future of cruising, Dickinson is nearly euphoric. “Over the next five years, cruise ships will carry an average of 6 million people a year. And of these 30 million, roughly half, or 15 million, will be first-time cruisers,” Dickinson says. “In the 20 years I’ve been in the cruise industry, we went from 3 million to 18 million (people who have been on a cruise), an increase of 15 million in 20 years. But we’re going to increase another 15 million in the next five years. Is that an explosion or what?”

Although the worldwide recession is causing many potential travelers to consider carefully whether or not they really can afford to go, cruising has been relatively resistant, with the number of North American cruise passengers up almost 10% in the first quarter of 1992 over the year before, according to CLIA. Among reasons often advanced for the relative financial health of cruising is that, in a recession, people choose a vacation where the cost is known up front.

In the cruise industry as in fashion, some lines have chosen to expand with a second label, but instead of taking fashion’s tack of going from high-priced couture clothing into less expensive fashions to reach a wider market, these lines are aiming at the upscale end of the market.

“We see the greatest growth potential in the premium section of the cruise industry,” says John Chandris, chairman of Celebrity Cruises, a three-ship upscale division of the Greek-owned Chandris group, which also operates budget-priced Fantasy Cruises. Chandris created its Celebrity group less than three years ago, when, in March, 1990, it made a low-key introduction of the renovated Meridian, followed by two new ships, the 1,354-passenger Horizon in May, 1990, and the 1,370-passenger Zenith last April. Although it came in quietly, Celebrity has gathered a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations, and represents one of the best mid-priced, high-quality buys in cruising.

Why create more upscale, pricey passenger space in a recession? Chandris believes that, even with the economic downturn, the traveling public is growing more sophisticated, more demanding and, increasingly, “will pay more to get more.”

Larry Pimentel, the new president of Seabourn Cruise Line, whose passengers pay about $700 a day per person, agrees. Aboard the 212-passenger Seabourn Pride and Seabourn Spirit, as on Cunard’s Sea Goddess ships, there’s no tipping, cabins are suite-sized, meals are prepared and served as in a fine restaurant with no assigned tables or seating times, and dinners can be served course by course in the cabin, if preferred. “It’s a personal pampering that allows somebody to decide they want to treat themselves as royalty,” Pimentel says.

Also entering the second-label arena are Crown Cruise Line and Dolphin Cruise Line, both based in South Florida. Crown is owned by Effjohn International--the same company that owns Commodore Cruises--a joint venture of two major Nordic shipping companies.

The Crown Jewel, the upscale line’s second new ship in two years, made its debut at the Barcelona Olympics before arriving in New York in late August for New England and Canada sailings. Then it will sail from New York to San Diego and Los Angeles Oct. 17. This 820-passenger vessel, a jewel box of a ship decorated in pretty pastels, with a glamorous glass-windowed dining room and chic sunbathing deck, should make quite a splash with upscale baby boomers and the thirtyish. Sister ship Crown Dynasty is due to arrive in April, 1993.

Dolphin is the most recent cruise line to adopt a second “couture” label, with its newly introduced Majesty Cruise Line and the 1,056-passenger Royal Majesty. Beginning Friday, the ship will make three- and four-day cruises from Miami to the Bahamas and Key West year-round. Among its unique features are the cruise industry’s first nonsmoking dining room and 132 smoke-free passenger cabins.

The only other new ships we can think of that forbid smoking, in this case in all cabins, are the new sailing ships Star Clipper and Star Flyer from Florida-based Star Clippers, which carry 180 passengers each.

Newest in the over-$500-a-day, per-person bracket is the eye-catching 354-passenger Radisson Diamond, certainly the most unusual new ship of 1992. Its twin-hulled, catamaran-like design makes it wider and chubbier-looking than traditional cruise vessels, rather like the short, fat robot from “Star Wars.”

Like many of the new ships, the Radisson Diamond is more hotel than ship inside, designed to appeal to resort-minded travelers and group-meeting organizers. After its lightly booked maiden season in Europe this summer, it is due to arrive in the Caribbean Oct. 9, with San Juan, Puerto Rico, as its home port. Line executives blame the poor bookings on a wait-and-see tendency of passengers, travel agents and meeting planners because of the Diamond’s revolutionary new design.

Dickinson believes that, contrary to what even industry insiders used to think, a novice cruise passenger does not necessarily begin with a short sailing and work his or her way up to longer cruises.

“Take a stockbroker from Los Angeles, for example, who spent his last vacation at the (luxurious and expensive) Halekulani in Honolulu--his first cruise may be two weeks on a Seabourn ship in the Mediterranean. He doesn’t have to start with a three-day cruise; he moves laterally from his land-based experience.”

He adds, “Twenty-five years ago, if you took a honeymoon cruise, your name was Rockefeller. Now it’s Smith or Jones.” We find honeymooners aboard virtually every ship, even, to our astonishment, on the child-friendly ships from Premier Cruise Line, where one-third of the 1,000-plus passengers on board any sailing may be under 15 years old. As the official cruise line of Walt Disney World, Premier sails from Port Canaveral, Fla., with costumed Disney characters on board and land packages in Orlando that include lodging, a rental car and park admissions.

Sometimes the cruise companies themselves misread trends. Earlier this year, Costa Cruise Lines launched a bid at the upscale market with its new CostaClassica, the first new ship for the Italian family-owned line in more than 25 years. American passengers knew the line’s other ships--CostaRiviera, Daphne and the former CarlaCosta (now sailing as Epirotiki’s Pallas Athena)--for their “cruising, Italian-style” pizzerias, gelaterias and warm, flirtatious Italian waiters.

But for the new ship, which made its debut last spring, the pizzeria was bumped in favor of a room serving a lavish tea that passengers had to pay for, cruise prices were edged up, and a lot of marble floors, plaster statuary and lace tablecloths appeared. Six months later, the executives responsible for the “EuroLuxe” theme were gone, and in their place as president and CEO is Bruce Nierenberg, one of the co-founders of Premier cruise line. The first thing Nierenberg did was lower the fare schedules and bring back cruising, Italian-style.

Costa will introduce two new mid-sized ships between now and the end of 1993, the 800-passenger CostaAllegra, due December 19, 1992, and the 1,300-passenger CostaRomantica, due December, 1993.

Carnival Cruise Lines, where Dickinson is vice president of sales and marketing, has two ships positioned in Port Canaveral that attracts families with small children.

What have cruise lines learned from passengers? Quite a lot, to judge from the 1992 CLIA study, which concludes that cruising rates higher in customer satisfaction than any other holiday, with 46% of respondents terming themselves “extremely satisfied,” the highest rating ever for cruises. An additional 43% of those interviewed picked “very satisfied,” for a total of 89%, edging out resort vacations, visiting friends and relatives, package tours and vacation rentals.