SuperStar Virgo in Hong Kong.
The comparative growth in different cruise markets over the past five years has show impressive growth and the expected impact of the addition of the Asian market, particularly China, will add greatly to these figures.
Earlier this year, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) released its 2014 State of the Cruise Industry Report. Included in the CLIA report, the country statistics for last year make for some interesting comparisons.
Missing from this table is China, where the number of its population taking cruises was reported by Forbes magazine to have more than doubled to 530,000 cruisers in 2013.
Growth figures for cruise passengers over past five years.
With cruise lines introducing fourteen new ocean ships this year with a total lower berth capacity of 36,000 passengers, these ships, if operated weekly, could potentially bring another 1.8 million cruisers a year to the market. With a rise from 21.3 million cruisers in 2013 to 21.7 million this year, the actual growth this year is expected to be 400,000.
The prizes for biggest growth in the world cruise market over the past five years go to Scandinavia, including Finland, which saw growth of 185%, from a small base, and Australia, with growth of 130% in the same period. Following this is Brazil, with 85% growth and Germany, at 80% over five years. And everything now indicates that this will very soon be followed by huge growth in Asia, particularly in China.
Countries such as Italy and Spain have seen numbers rise in some years and fall in others but the real laggard has been Canada, which has been at a virtual standstill for the past five years. If the CLIA figures are correct and Canada had grown at the same rate as the US, it should have been tying Italy for fourth place by now.
Instead, it has shrunk from 775,000 passengers in 2009 and is now languishing in sixth place, having been replaced by Australia, which has less than two-thirds of the population.
According to Bloomberg’s Business Week back in May, China is expected to be the world’s second-largest cruise market, after the US, by 2017, with growth rates far higher than in North America and Europe.
The Asian Cruise Association, on the other hand, estimated last year that area demand will rise to 3.8 million annual cruisers by 2020, with 1.6 million from China. The Chinese government itself is meanwhile targeting 4.5 million Chinese cruisers by 2020, and new cruise terminals have either been completed or are under way in eight Chinese ports. (From Cybercruises.com)
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