Global Cruise Industry Provides $198 Billion in Economic Impact, Order Book Ready to Break $100 Billion in Value

An order book valued at $82 billion and set to pass $100 billion, possibly by the end of the year. A global economic impact of $198 billion, providing 1.8 million jobs worldwide and $60 billion wages. A record of 37.2 million guests carried in 2025. A close to 90% intent to cruise.

“The state of the cruise industry is excellent,” Bud Darr, president and CEO of the Cruise Lines International Association, told a packed room at this year’s 41st annual Seatrade Cruise Global conference in Miami. “We are strong. We are resilient. We are better than ever.”

Speaking of the global order book, which stretches into 2037, Mary Bond, group director of Seatrade Global, said: “This bodes well for all our futures as more newbuilds mean more opportunities for everyone… It will require new entrants to enter our world, ensuring more diversification of the product, more ships calling at more ports and destinations, more economic value generated, and a higher profile for the cruise industry in the wider travel arena.”

The order book, she said, is currently valued at $82 billion, but she added that with a handful of newbuild projects that are close to finalizing details, the order book should soon pass the $100 billion barrier.

Bond and Darr kicked off Seatrade’s keynote general session on Tuesday morning with a list of good news showcasing the strength of the industry.

While cruise ships carried 37.2 million guests globally in 2025, Darr said the industry expects to carry 40 million passengers by the end of this decade. And cruisers are getting younger – one-third of new-to-cruise guests are under the age of 40.

There is a “remarkably higher level of people that have never cruised before that really want to,” Darr said. “I think that means our message is getting through… We’ve just scratched the surface of the potential market that’s out there.”

Currently the cruise industry accounts for between 2% and 3% of the international and global tourism market, he said.

“There’s a lot of room to still grow within that market and satisfy the demand that we know is out there…”

CEO Panel

General session was, as usual, dominated by the CEO panel, which this year included Darr, along with Carnival Corp’s CEO Josh Weinstein, Royal Caribbean Group’s chairman and CEO Jason Liberty, MSC Group Cruise Division executive chairman Pierfrancesco Vago, and making his first appearance at NCL Holdings president and CEO, John Chidsey. Also making a first appearance as panel moderator was CNBC correspondent Contessa Brewer.

Perhaps because it was his first appearance, Chidsey hadn’t gotten the memo that shoes should be black loafer-style sneakers with white outer soles. He instead wore traditional loafers with no socks, something that Brewer commented on immediately.

Brewer also addressed one of the many elephants in the room right away.

“What in the world does a guy who ran Subway, a sandwich guy, know about cruising?”

“I’m a turn-around guy,” Chidsey said. Chidsey had previously served on the Board at NCLH, then left – something he said, “…maybe was a mistake because here I am.”

“I do think we can improve our execution. I think there were some missteps. Maybe we were not as aligned as we could have been. This is what I enjoy, which is making the team work better… I’m looking forward to doing yet another turn around.”

Without skipping a beat, Brewer addressed a second elephant in the room – the war in the Middle East. She asked Vago, specifically, to give his veteran perspective, particularly because MSC Cruises has a ship stuck in the Persian Gulf.

“We’re living day by day,” he said. “The situation is very fluid. The reality is that we have five ships stuck in the Gulf for the time being.”

[The five ships Vago was talking about are the one MSC Cruises ship, two Celestyal Cruises ships, and two TUI ships.]

Already, he added, MSC Cruises has had to delay MSC Euribia’s itineraries by several weeks. Though he did not mention them, Celestyal Cruises has also been forced to cancel sailings.

“Morning is one thing. Lunch time is another; dinner is another again. We need to stay cool and be ready to move out as soon as the possibility and the opportunity comes,” he said.

From the war in the Middle East, Brewer turned to Weinstein to ask about the impact of rising fuel costs. Carnival Corp. is the only one of the major cruise operators that has not hedged its fuel costs.

Weinstein admitted that volatile fuel pricing and not having hedged fuel prices, will “at this particular moment” hurt the company more that it will other cruise operators. But he said Carnival’s focus when it comes to fuel is not how to avoid scenarios where fuel costs go up, but to find ways to use less fuel altogether.

“The focus for Carnival Corp has been use less. At the end of the day, if we can consume less fuel, we will save money and it’s better for the planet… pretty much all of our effort and interest in the fuel space hasn’t been about reducing volatility. It’s been about reducing the need.”

Weinstein also pointed out the cruise industry overall is in a better position to deal with these types of difficulties that it was the last time the world faced a fuel crisis back in 2008 and 2009.

“I can speak for our company but I can also speak for the industry about how better off the industry is in facing something like this than it was 20 years ago. The amount of mainstream demand that we have is night and day… It [cruising] is a mainstream consideration for the major markets of this world. We are not an alternative vacation. We are a vacation. And that sets us up very well for volatility.”