Cruise News

North American cruisers are extremely price-conscious. They're likely to move away from expensive cruise brands. A robust market of high-spending Chinese vacationers can't emerge soon enough for cruise lines.

Cruise lines entering China face a dilemma: tailoring the onboard experience to the Chinese may remove some of the Western touches that Chinese travelers actually want from their vacation. MSC Cruises is searching for a middle-ground.

Cruise lines haven't been effective in selling millennials on cruising. A direct appeal to the Selfie generation from social media influencers makes sense.

It was only a matter of time until Carnival Corp. introduced a brand to serve Chinese cruisers. With the imprimatur of the Chinese government and the backing of its massive sovereign wealth fund, Carnival now has a huge advantage over its competitors in Asia.

The negatives of the cruise industry get so much attention that it's easy to forget that cruising contributes to many regional economies around the country.

Crystal Cruises has made a big investment in expanding its product offerings to meet the expectations of a new generation of luxury traveler.

Chinese consumers want to cruise in Asia, and cruise lines are jockeying to meet the demand. If the Asia experiment doesn't work out, lines can send their ships back to high-demand regions like the Caribbean and Mediterranean.

No cruise company has yet to develop an effective online booking and marketing platform for consumers. For now, they need travel agents to act as their de facto North American marketing and booking force.

New ships are essential to any cruise line refining its brand identity. From a pure business perspective, it's surprising one of the major cruise lines hasn't purchased part of a shipyard in order to better integrate its ship construction pipeline into its overall operation.

Some lines call them service fees. Others call them gratuities. But one thing is for sure: cruise lines generate income by charging daily fees that aren't included in initial cruise fares. It's unclear whether the money is actually going to those who serve passengers, or represents a growing source of ancillary income to offset other costs. For now, we'll call this phenomenon hate sailing.