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Tribune News Service

Cruise ships are trying to navigate murky waters.
Do travellers want more and faster waterslides? Or the number of decks to reach the 20s? Do they still want to hike on all seven continents? Or just stay on the ship and sip fruity cocktails?
Growth in cruise ship travel is starting to slow compared with the post-pandemic boom. That trend has cruise lines looking at several ways to keep people coming on board.
Some are creating new private resorts. Others are doubling down on super-high-end luxury trips. Still others are offering river cruises.

In December, Royal Caribbean will debut its third all-inclusive resort, the Royal Beach Club Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
The company, which is based in Miami in the US, is promising the private-island resort will include the “world’s largest swim-up bar”.
It spans 17 acres (seven hectares) of land, with seven beach bars and “pools for every vibe”. The project is a partnership with the Bahamian government.
Switzerland’s MSC Cruises remodelled its private island, Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve in the Bahamas, in 2024, adding a private yacht club and solar farm. Now, the cruise line is creating a second private island near the original thanks to a dredging project at Ocean Cay.
Several cruise lines are creating more high-end luxury cruises, in part because that is where the money is. MSC Cruises, which opened a modern new terminal in April at the Port of Miami (PortMiami), is betting on it.
Explora Journeys, the luxury company founded by MSC Cruises’ parent company in 2021, will have its two ships, Explora I and Explora II, sail from Miami starting in November through the winter season.
Each offers over 20 trips that are either eight or 16 nights. Many sail to the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan and elsewhere in the Caribbean. That includes the Greater and Lesser Antilles, St. John’s Island and the lagoons of Tortola.
The Explora III, a new vessel that will start sailing during the summer of 2026, will have 13 trips from PortMiami starting in November 2026, mostly to San Juan and the Caribbean but also, for the first time, La Romana in the Dominican Republic.
Of course, these journeys are not for everyone – eight-night trips start at about US$3,000 per person.

The cruise industry experienced massive growth as the Covid-19 pandemic faded and millions decided to jump into their bucket lists.
In 2024, 35 million people took an ocean cruise worldwide, up 9 per cent from 2023, according to a new report from the trade group Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
Yet the growth rate is slowing. The report forecasts 3 per cent growth in 2027 and 2 per cent in 2028. The 310 CLIA-member ocean vessels operating in 2025 is just a 2 per cent increase from the year before. That is the smallest annual growth since at least 2018, excluding the pandemic year 2021.
And there are other challenges.
Cities throughout the world are imposing restrictions on large ships docking at their ports.
In January, the mayor of Nice, on the French Riviera, issued a decree barring cruise ships with 900 or more passengers from docking at its ports.
In 2024, Juneau, in the US state of Alaska, had a ballot measure that would ban ships from docking on Saturdays. While voters rejected it, it gave life to other ways to limit cruise tourism. In November, voters in Bar Harbour, in the US state of Maine, chose to maintain their limit of 1,000 passengers per day.
Cities making it tougher for big cruise ships to dock is one concern. But even busy ports have finite space, industry analysts say, and will soon have to cope with congestion.
PortMiami, for example, will be able to handle 12 ships simultaneously once it finishes all three berths at MSC’s new terminal that was inaugurated in April. Earlier this year, it set a record when 10 ships arrived one morning.
“They may have room to build one or two more docks,” says Stewart Chiron, a cruise expert who takes at least 10 cruises a year. “But then what? … You can build new ships, but where are you going to put them?”

This may be leading to one of the biggest trends in cruising: visiting private islands and other luxury private facilities held or built by the cruise companies themselves.
The first one, Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas, launched by Norwegian Cruise Line, dates back to 1977. Royal Caribbean’s Perfect Day CocoCay, opened in 2019, lies just to the west.
Next year, Royal Caribbean will open another private port, Royal Beach Club Cozumel, in Mexico. Guests can snorkel, kayak, and enjoy tequila tastings and cooking classes. The resort will include swim-up bars, street markets and private cabanas. In 2027, the cruise line will launch what it is calling Perfect Day Mexico, a 200-acre property in Mahahual.
Each allows for “new adventures in the western Caribbean”, the company says.
The Florida-based Carnival Cruise Line says it expects to have ready Celebration Key, its own private development in the Bahamas, for sailing trips starting in July. On the southern side of Grand Bahama island and about 17 miles (27km) northeast of Freeport, the island’s main city, the resort will have its own pier with two berths where Carnival’s largest ships can dock.
In 2026, the pier at Celebration Key will add two more berths so that a total of four Carnival ships can dock at the same time.
Costing US$600 million, the area will feature water slides for children, scuba diving and other sports, and excursions. There will be more than 30 restaurants and bars that passengers can reach by walking or swimming.
In addition to giving the ships additional and alternative places to dock, these private resorts give travellers more beach time, expand group activities and bring in more money to the cruise lines.
Royal Caribbean is also making a play all the way in Antarctica.
It expects to have an “Antarctica Bridge fly and cruise programme” ready by the end of 2025 that allows travellers to fly directly from Santiago to Puerto Williams, both in Chile, before getting on a cruise. But before that, guests can stay at a 150-room hotel, The Cormorant at 55 South, in Puerto Williams, which is in the Beagle Channel.
The site, self-proclaimed as the “southernmost hotel on Earth”, is planning to open by the end of this year. It overlooks the channel and is surrounded by forest, water and the snow-capped Patagonia mountains. Amenities include a fitness centre, gift shop, lounge and a large restaurant.
The hotel and the expedition cruise ships are being organised by Silversea Cruises, an ultra-luxury and expedition cruising company Royal Caribbean acquired in 2018. Silversea has three expedition ships.
Then there are river cruises.
In 2027, Royal Caribbean will start offering trips along European rivers on its subsidiary company Celebrity River Cruises. It has already ordered 10 ships and will go up against better-known river carriers like Switzerland’s Viking.
Whether these trends will fend off the uncertainty the industry faces is another question.


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Cruise trends for 2025, from private islands and resorts to super luxury trips

Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas cruise ship docks at Labadee, the company’s private resort on Haiti, to which it recently suspended travel due to civil unrest. Photo: TNS

Carnival Cruises’ Carnival Conquest ship departs from PortMiami as beachgoers enjoy the nice weather at Miami’s South Beach during spring break on March 21, 2025. Photo: TNS

Guests from the MSC World America cruise ship visit Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve in the Bahamas on April 10, 2025. Photo: Getty Images for MSC World America

MSC Cruises’ new Terminal AA, the world’s largest cruise terminal, was inaugurated in Miami’s PortMiami in April. Photo: TNS

Virgin Galactic plans to raise ticket price for space trips from current US$600,000

A still from a video from Virgin Galactic on August 10, 2023, with Anastatia Mayers (front left), 18, Jon Goodwin (back right), 80, and Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses (front right) in space. Virgin Galactic had been selling seats on its forthcoming Delta spacecraft at about US$600,000 a seat. In 2026, it plans to charge more. Photo: Virgin Galactic/AFP

Virgin Galactic’s now-retired VSS Unity taking off for a suborbital space flight from the US state of New Mexico in 2024. The company will replace it with its forthcoming Delta spacecraft. Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images

2 weeks’ free accommodation offered by German city in bid to attract new residents

The current population in Eisenhüttenstadt in eastern Germany, near the border with Poland, has declined to some 24,000 in recent years, from around 50,000 in 1990. Photo: Getty Images

Eisenhüttenstadt was initially designed for a population of 30,000. Photo: Getty Images

Blocks of residential buildings are seen in Eisenhüttenstadt. Photo: Getty Images

Incredible underground flood protection facility in Japan is one of world’s largest

KASUKABE, SAITAMA, JAPAN - 2016/06/01: GCANS Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel  is an underground water flood control project.  It is the largest underground flood water facility in the world and was built to control the overflow of Tokyo&apos;s rivers during Japan&apos;s monsoon seasons.  GCANS has five large containment silos connected by six kilometers of tunnels.  Its most famous feature is the large cistern with giant pillars that resemble an underground cathedral or temple. The main job of GCANS is to store, then divert, the overflow of water into the Edo River to avoid flood damage. (Photo by John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The pressure-adjusting water tank of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel in Kasukabe, near Tokyo, Japan, contains 59 towering pillars each 18 metres high. Photo: LightRocket via Getty Images

The facility took 13 years to build at a cost of more than US$1 billion. Photo: Getty Images

Shafts at the facility are large enough to fit the Statue of Liberty. Photo: Getty Images

A worker opens the door leading down to the facility’s pressure-adjusting water tank. Photo: Getty Images

The pressure-adjusting water tank is reached via 50 metres of stairs. Photo: Getty Images

A computer screen displays tank information in the control room of the facility. Photo: Getty Images

Travel influencer couple on horror India gang rape and Taliban interrogation during epic 6-year motorbike trip

Travel influencers Fernanda (right) and Vicente take a break in Spiti Valley, in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, during their six-year motorbike trip. The couple open up about Fernanda’s gang rape in India and other experiences during their trip, including being interrogated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Konya, Turkey. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda with a rented motorbike in Sri Lanka. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Jodhpur, India. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente camp near Kalut, in Iran’s Hormozgan province. Photo: Instagram @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vincente at the Khunjerab Pass, in the mountains on the border of Pakistan and China. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda makes friends in Rajasthan, India. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Samarra, Iraq. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda in Kuwait, approaching Saudi Arabia. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Cappadocia, Turkey. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente near Passu, a small village in northern Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Lifestyle

Travel & Leisure

Companies including Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line are placing big bets on where they think the industry is heading


Companies including Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line are placing big bets on where they think the industry is heading.


Travel news and advice

Luxury travel

Luxury cruises

Travel Destinations

Cruise trends for 2025, from private islands and resorts to super luxury trips

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Companies including Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line are placing big bets on where they think the industry is heading

Companies including Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line are placing big bets on where they think the industry is heading