What are the biggest trends in cruising for 2020?
I'm Gary Bembridge.
This is another of my cruising tips for travellers.
I want to give you my predictions
on what I think the six big trends
that you're going to experience in cruising in 2020 are.
Starting with this one.
Without a shadow of a doubt we're going to keep seeing
the continued growth of cruising,
both in terms of passenger trips
and also the expansion of ships.
It's predicted that
there will be 32 million
passenger journeys in 2020,
which is up from 30 million in 2019.
But importantly that growth is being fueled
by a couple of things.
First of all, there are more ships coming into service.
Every year there are loads of them.
In 2020 there are going
to be 19 new ships coming into service,
across a wide range of cruise lines,
including Carnival, Celebrity, Crystal Cruises,
Costa, MSC Cruises,
P&O Cruises, Ponant,
Regent Seven Seas, Royal Caribbean,
Saga,
Silversea.
So many new ships coming,
which of course gets lots of excitement,
and people trying cruise ships,
particularly some of them are pretty innovative.
The other thing that's going to drive it a lot
is expedition cruising.
There's a great big growth in expedition cruising,
and there's new ships coming, as well as new itineraries
from
the
cruise lines, like Silversea, Ponant,
Scenic, Crystal, Lindblad.
All of them have new ships coming along
and there is just a lot of energy, a lot of noise
about expedition cruising,
that's going to places like the Arctic, Antarctica,
and some of the more exotic places in the world.
So that's a big driver.
The other big driver I think, of the growth in cruising
is going to be more and more focus on adults
and on solo travellers.
So, the last couple of years a lot of the growth in cruising
has come from attracting families onto cruising
as a great value proposition.
Also getting more multi-generational,
obviously because traditionally cruising has been
a little bit older.
So, encouraging the sort of grandparents to get their kids,
and their kid's kids, onto cruises.
So that's been a big push,
and a really big focus for the cruising.
However, what I think we're seeing more and more,
is cruise lines starting to chase the next generations.
So they're chasing the millennials, the Generation X,
who are starting to become more interested in cruising,
and we're seeing some developments in that area.
So for example, Virgin Voyages with their Scarlet Lady,
which is going to be 18+ focused.
Trying to be very youthfully-driven.
We're seeing,
even for example in the UK,
Marella Cruises, when they got a new ship,
they made it adults only focused,
and of course other cruise liners, like Saga,
which are bringing new ships onboard,
which are focused on the adult market.
I think we're going to see a lot of focus
on adults cruising,
as
there's an opportunity to have ships, and itineraries,
and routes which cater for couples,
particularly younger couples,
who don't want to be surrounded by families.
I think we're definitely going to see in 2020,
lots of action happening around those key areas.
The second big trend that I think is emerging,
and going to become more and more prevalent in 2020,
is the bundling
and getting rid of some of those extra costs
and bundling them into the fare.
There's a lot of pushback around the extra charges
for things like gratuities,
WiFi, because of course,
as you get more and more younger people,
and more and more connected people onboard,
they're used to just having WiFi as included,
because they're using it at Starbucks or wherever,
and it's having WiFi easily accessible.
So we're seeing lots of pushback to the extra charges,
especially dining, WiFi, gratuities,
all those kind of things.
And what I've seen is a couple of really interesting things
that make me feel that during 2020 and beyond,
we're going to see fares becoming more bundled
or all-inclusive.
Virgin is making a lot of waves when they launch,
if you can excuse the pun,
because when they come onboard,
their fares are going to include gratuities,
they're going to include a lot of basic drinks,
some soft drinks, juices, coffees.
They're going to include Wi-Fi.
They're going to include all of the specialty dining,
so dining on all of their venues is included in the price.
So, bundling more and more in.
That's going to make a lot of people I think,
in the industry watch how that goes.
The other thing that I've observed
is we're starting to see some cruise lines,
particularly in the UK,
starting to bundle things in more.
So, in the last year,
P&O have built gratuities into their fare.
Marella have an all-inclusive option,
where everything's included within the fare,
except for excursions.
We're starting to see that.
The other thing that I've found very interesting,
as I was booking various cruises I'm doing in 2020,
pretty much all of them had bundled fares in some way.
So, all the cruises I'm going on have offers and deals,
when I booked, which bundled things in.
For example, I'm going on a Norwegian Cruise
in the Caribbean, and that included specialty dining,
WiFi, gratuities.
All sorts of things included.
Oceania obviously have their OLife fares,
where you can choose to take excursions,
drinks packages, or onboard credit.
Ponant, another cruise that I've booked,
that bundles pretty much everything in.
So I'm seeing more and more that starting to happen.
When I looked at a lot of the offers and deals,
what used to happen
is a lot of them were offering things like upgrades,
but I'm seeing more and more now, they're bundled in.
For example, another cruise that I've booked with Celebrity,
again, pretty much everything was bundled in
through that offer.
It's either going to become formal
or you're going to find more and more you can buy deals,
and get deals, which have things more bundled.
I think this will become a big trend,
particularly as they try and attract more people
that are used to just having these things all included.
The third trend is linked to that.
And so what cruise lines, I think,
are going to start to do, during the course of 2020,
and I'm giving you examples
where they're already doing that
is as they bundle more things into the fare,
they need to find new things that they can charge you,
once you get onboard, to generate revenue.
The most obvious of these is the pay to get access.
Traditionally speaking, if you're in a suite,
you'd get all sorts of things included
prior to your disembarkation, embarkation.
Perhaps priority seating in the restaurant.
You might get some meals bundled in
in some of the specialty dining.
We're seeing that start to happen more and more
as cruise lines are looking for new ways of charging people.
For example, Carnival have, on many of their cruises,
particularly in the Caribbean, Foster to the Fun programme,
which you pay a premium for,
and that gives you things like embarkation,
get your luggage quicker, all that kind of stuff.
Then, you have Royal Caribbean,
which has The Key, which has even more included,
where you get your priority embarkation, disembarkation,
but does include an embarkation day,
disembarkation day meal,
priority seating in the restaurants,
and all sorts of other benefits and features.
That's a new way of getting people to pay extra things,
and I think we're going to see more and more,
people searching out ways
that they can get people to charge, once you're onboard,
as they bundle more things into the fare.
I think that's going to be a big trend coming in 2020.
The next trend is one around
changing the way that cruise lines call on ports.
One of the big challenges,
as cruises become more and more popular, is overtourism,
and places getting really, really crowded.
And certainly, if you've been
in some of the key places in the Caribbean,
or in the Mediterranean,
these places are getting crazy, crazy busy.
So cruise lines are increasingly having to look at how
to improve the whole experience,
both for the cities, the towns, the ports,
and also the passengers.
I think we're going to see more and more stuff,
and it starts to happen already.
For example, we're seeing more
and more cruise lines offer longer stays,
so overnight stays for example.
This also means
that they can then arrive a little bit later.
Some of the ships might be there earlier,
people going off for excursions earlier.
They arrive a little bit later,
because they're staying overnight,
or perhaps staying til lunchtime the next day.
We're going to see a lot of that happening.
The other thing that we're seeing happening, linked to that,
is excursions, and the nature of excursions are changing,
where they're looking
at putting on more and more excursions
to encourage people to get further out.
Of course, the big incentive for cities, and towns,
and regions, is you're trying to push more money
and people further out,
so they share the benefit of the cruise industry.
I think you're going to see more and more excursions
which are trying to get people away from the crowded areas.
The other thing that we're seeing increasingly
is some of the ports are very congested.
So whether it's Barcelona, or Venice,
or even Southampton in the UK,
just using some examples in Europe,
and what we're starting to see increasingly
is looking at alternative ports.
So, in Venice, moving to a port further away from Venice.
Barcelona's looking.
An example in the UK,
Portsmouth are trying to attract more cruise ships,
which is just a little bit down from Southampton.
Dover is trying to attract more cruise ships.
So starting to see,
actually pushing where the ships leave from, depart from,
into more varied ports.
Close by, but just spreading some of the load.
I think we're going to see more and more of this happening
as they try to figure out how do they stagger
and reduce the impact of cruise,
and cruise passengers ramming into places,
and we're going to see that so much more.
Of course, one of the obvious trends
is we're going to see
more and more focus on the environment,
both from a PR perspective,
but also from a practical perspective.
As cruising grows,
and as the whole attitude of passengers,
governments, regulatory bodies, focuses on the environment,
the cruise industry has to change.
They've set a target of reducing emissions for example
in this decade by 40%.
For example, what they're doing
is looking for alternative fossil fuels.
Almost half of all new builds now use LNG,
liquified natural gas, which is dramatically better.
We're seeing low sulphur fuels being introduced.
There's even some experimentation,
particularly on smaller expedition vehicles,
with hybrid, and battery and biofuel.
A real big push to try and reduce
the environmental footprint,
and the carbon footprint of cruising.
Huge push on recycling,
removal of single plastics across cruise ships.
Recycling better.
Just really looking at the whole waste, waste management,
waste water, how do they deal with waste.
I think there's going to be a huge amount of push
on environment, partly because they have to,
but also I think passengers, certainly already,
and through 2020,
are going to become more and more demanding,
and I think they'll start choosing cruise lines
that they see, and ships that they see,
that have a better environmental footprint than the past.
Another example
is increasingly ports are putting in shore-side power,
so cruise ships can actually plug themselves
into the power grid, so they're not in towns,
pumping out
stuff into the air.
And of course, ports are being really pushed
by the residents in those areas
to improve the air quality.
Things like that,
I think we're going to see much more high-profile,
and much pressure on cruise lines to address.
The other thing I think we're going to keep seeing
as a trend,
is this obsession that cruise lines have
with brand partnerships.
Every time I go on a cruise,
no matter which cruise line it is,
whether I've been on it before or not,
I just see more and more brand partnerships popping up.
There seems to be this real obsession
with giving people, when they come onboard,
recognised brands.
I've give you an example.
When I was on a Seabourn Cruise recently,
they had a partnership with Tim Rice to do shows.
They had a partnership with Thomas Keller on the food.
They had a partnership with Molton Brown on toiletries.
They had a partnership with Doctor Weil on wellness.
They had a partnership
with a guy called Brian Van Flandern on drinks.
They had a partnership with UNESCO on excursions.
And every time I go on a cruise
I see more and more of these branded partnerships.
Also linked to that, is branded offerings.
So you're seeing more and more well known brands from land
appearing up on ships as dining venues for example.
There seems to be that obsession,
and I think that's going to keep growing in 2020.
Those are our predictions of some of the big trends in 2020.
If you have any thoughts, love to hear them.
But remember, I have loads more videos,
packed full of cruising tips and advice,
so why don't you watch another one of them right now?