- In 2022, the cruise industry revenue worldwide amounted to nearly $19 billion.
- Despite being one of the most popular type of vacation, I grew up thinking cruises were the worst.
- That changed when I spent three months living on a cruise. Now I'd recommend cruising to anyone.
There are two types of people – those who cruise and those who don't. For the longest time, I was the latter.
The likely explanation for my longtime disdain for cruises is my parents and the types of vacations they took me on as a kid. Since we lived in the UK, my family would always go to the same seaside town in Spain during summer. We'd go for weeks on end, and I remember I spent a lot of time feeling bored. Around the winter holidays, we'd go to Puerto Rico, where my mother's from.
Even as a kid, I can remember walking around Old San Juan, the historical quarter of Puerto Rico's capital city, and seeing huge cruise ships docking in the harbor.
I always thought of the monstrously huge boats as eyesores and assumed they were carrying tourists who didn't really care about the place they were visiting. Why would they? They were there for a few days at most, so why not spend it lounging around a pleasant, nondescript, beach before hopping onto the ship to repeat the routine at the next Caribbean island on the itinerary?
Clearly, I harbored some disdain for the cruise industry that, on the flip side, has only been growing over the last decade. Besides the years affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the cruise industry has gone from strength to strength. In 2009 the number of ocean cruise passengers worldwide was a mere 17.8 million. 12 years later, and that number jumped to 31.5 million, according to Statista.
For the longest time, I just didn't get the hype. Then, in the spring of 2018, I decided to spend an entire semester of college aboard the MS Deutschland-World Odyssey after being accepted to Semester at Sea, a study abroad program where university students spend around three months living on a cruise ship.
And boy, did I love it.
I was the happiest I've ever been for those three months living on the ocean
There are so many benefits to going on a cruise that no one told me until I experienced it firsthand. Like, did you know seeing the sun dip below the horizon when you're in the middle of the ocean can literally take your breath away? And that the rocking of the ship on the ocean makes for the best sleep of your life, something that as someone who struggles with insomnia, I've chased ever since?
More than that, one of my favorite things about my time on Semester at Sea was the sense of community that develops on a cruise. I consider myself to be somewhat of an introvert but being in such close proximity with so many others, it literally forced me to get out of my comfort zone and helped me quickly find my people.
Another incredible aspect about the cruise that I've come to appreciate years later is how people of all ages can enjoy traveling by cruise. On Semester at Sea, some professors chose to bring their young children with them, who were dubbed the "ship kids."
Those little rascals took part in all of the seafaring traditions of the cruise, such as the Neptune Day festivities, the talent show, and the Sea Olympics – and they loved it.
But we also had a group of older passengers, known as "Lifelong learners," join the voyage. For them, I can imagine cruising was an ideal way of exploring so many different countries and cultures without having to put themselves through the discomfort of a long-haul flight.
Now I say the longer the cruise, the better
The biggest bone I had to pick with cruising before I went on one was that I thought it was a shallow way to travel. How can you really immerse yourself in a country if you're only there for 24 hours?
And in fairness, there were ports on my cruise that were too short for me to confidently say I truly spent time there. For example, I visited Portugal and Hawaii, but I can't ever give recommendations to people going there because I probably spent less than 24 hours in either.
But now I'd say that having the opportunity to visit over 10 different countries on a cruise, even if I spent an average of a few days in each port, is better and more exciting than spending the entire trip in one place.
No, I wasn't able to completely immerse myself in local culture, but I did get a sense of it. At the end of the day, it helped me determine which countries I'd like to go back to and explore further in the future.
So let's be honest, no type of vacation or mode of transport on holidays is perfect, cruises included. But I've stopped judging people who enjoy them because, frankly, I am one of them now.
Watch: The rise and fall of the cruise industry
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