Chief executive officer of travel technology company Adido Andy Headington offers his take on the future of the cruise industry and how the sector may continue to prosper in 2024.

Looking back on the last 12 months, I think it’s clear to anyone in the travel industry that cruise has had a good year. While we await the official statistics from CLIA on how many guests set sail in 2023, we’re hearing positive news from nearly all the major ocean and river cruise lines – giving us a good indicative read on the situation.

I recently participated in a cruise-specific event, alongside some industry big-hitters. It led me to delve into the online search data, as I wanted to understand if this wave of success for cruise was set to continue into 2024 and beyond – and if agents should prepare for it accordingly.

Impressively, searches for cruise by October 2023 were already up by 40% on the whole of 2022. Looking at this upward trajectory, my guess is that by year-end we’ll have witnessed a 75% increase in volume.

Given the events of 2020, and the subsequent impact that had on the industry, I needed to ensure I was comparing like-for-like. Using Google Trends, I looked at the volumes for cruise search categories every year since 2019. The data showed me that 2023 will have outperformed 2019 by at least 10% at year-end – and that cruise is potentially the fastest growing travel sector out there.

Needless to say, the data has backed up what the operators were saying – cruise really is ‘having a moment’ – and 2023 will likely be a record-breaking year. More importantly though, will it continue, or will the wave of success break?

Looking at the forward-looking behaviour of cruisers, the answer is an easy yes. Searches for cruises with a two-year lead time, departing in 2025, are up +144% on last year. It means more potential customers are searching for further-out sailings than ever before – so as we head into January, we need to be focussing on 2024 and also laying the groundwork for 2025 and beyond.

Overall – via a combination of the surge in cruise searches, the inevitable growth in passengers seen in 2023, the surpassing of pre-2020 levels and the forward-looking trends – the rise of cruise is currently here to stay.

As agents navigate their way through the priorities of peaks, my advice would be to harness this momentum. Ensure cruise is at the forefront of your activity, including having it prominently placed on your webpages, publish related content on your socials, and line up your search campaigns to take advantage of the positive trends. The cruise wave isn’t stopping any time soon.

Andy Headington is CEO of Adido