Cruise facts & tidbits

Interesting
cruise industry
facts, tidbits
& statistics

Passengers

More than 10,000,000 people take a cruise each year. About 80% will do it in North American waters.

Ports of call

There are over 2000 ports of call around our planet that cruise ships can visit.

Most popular starting ports

About half of all passengers on major world cruise lines begin their trips in one of these three Florida ports: Miami, Port Canaveral, and Fort Lauderdale.

Most popular destination

More people cruise to the Caribbean than any other destination in the world.

Non-destination

For some cruisers, the ship itself is the primary destination, not the ports of call.

Cruise ship population

There are more than 300 sea-going cruise ships in the world.

Collective capacity

They collectively have room for over a quarter-million passengers.

Individual capacities

The latest super-sized ships carry over 4 thousand people (counting passengers and crew). They would dwarf the Titanic and are as tall as a sixteen-story building.

Construction cost

Those gargantuan ships can cost a cruise line a half-billion American dollars before the first passenger boards.

The big three

Today, 3 cruise line groups (Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Star/NCL) control roughly two-thirds of world's cruise passenger capacity.

Travel agents

Almost 90% of cruise tickets are sold through travel agents.

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