Читать книгу Global Experience Industries - Jens Christensen - Страница 42

Cruise vacations have become a popular way of spending a holiday.⁶⁸ A cruise is an all-inclusive holiday on board a large ship, including stopovers at different ports of call. All kinds of entertainment and comfort are found on board the ships, including delicious food, good music and dancing, swimming pools, sports facilities, cinemas, gaming, wellness facilities, medical care, etc. all of which are meant to give you good experiences in company with hundreds of people, mostly middle aged and older.

Like most other tourism sectors, cruising developed in the US before it spread to the rest of the world.⁶⁹ For decades, Americans have been able to take cruises to the Caribbean, along the North American West coast up to Alaska, to Hawaii, the Far East and Europe. In the 1990s, cruise lines were introduced to Europe, too. Norwegian, German, British, Dutch and Italian shipping companies began investing in cruise ships and started to organize trips for Europeans around the Baltic coasts, along the Norwegian west coast, across the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, just like the American cruise lines increasingly brought American tourists to Europe. For example, a leading international cruise line harbour has been developed in Copenhagen.⁷⁰ Cruise tours re-created some of the glamour that surrounded the Atlantic Ocean liners between the two World Wars. The shipping companies address customers directly through the Internet or via travel agencies that increasingly put cruises on their agenda.

Cruise lines are an American invention, and American tourists and shipping companies have continued to dominate this business into the new millennium. The number of cruise-passengers keeps on growing, having reached 11 million in 2004, of which some 80 percent were Americans.⁷¹ Direct revenues of the industry are $20 billion and the deriving economic effects twice as much, corresponding to one percent of total tourism revenues. More than half the American cruise lines leave from Florida. Continued growth is projected for the cruise line industry that might double its revenues within the next decade.⁷² The popularity of cruise tours may be seen from the fact that every sixth American at one time or another has been on a cruise vacation. Most passengers are middle aged and older.⁷³

Like any other industry, the international expansion of cruise line tours has resulted in a global consolidation process around a few companies. American Carnival Cruise Lines of the Carnival Corporation and the Royal Caribbean are the world’s two largest cruise lines, followed by Star Cruises in Asia Pacific.⁷⁴ Most independent cruise lines have been swallowed by the global consolidation process of these three leading cruise lines.