Will Cruise Lines Establish Year-Round Caribbean Routes?

Image: Carnival Corp.’s Marie McKenzie (center) on the June 17 panel with Wendy McDonald of Royal Caribbean Group (right) and panel moderator Claudine Pohl of Lemoneight. (Photo by Brian Major)

by Brian Major
Last updated: 11:25 AM ET, Wed June 19, 2024

Mid-year 2024 finds leisure cruising at the zenith of its popularity with travelers. Caribbean-bound itineraries are driving record 2024 cruise numbers after a similarly robust 2023.

The segment’s success has led Caribbean destination officials to hope that cruise lines might deploy ships in Caribbean waters year-round rather than on a largely seasonal basis.

As things stand, contemporary cruise lines move ships away from Caribbean ports to Alaska and Europe during the summer months. Will this period of industry-wide smooth sailing compel cruise lines to commit to more frequent Caribbean deployment?

During a panel discussion at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) ’s “Caribbean Week” conference in New York, top cruise lines and Caribbean destination officials debated the question.

Since beginning in her role with Carnival Corp. in 2017, “The consistent challenge I’ve heard in the [Caribbean] region is, ‘We need more year-around cruising. How do I get to make more calls to our destination?’” said Marie McKenzie, Carnival’s senior vice president, government and destination affairs.

McKenzie confirmed that Caribbean cruise bookings tend to wane in the summer months, leading cruise lines to deploy vessels in other regions. “We wind up moving our ships to [areas like] Alaska and Europe,” she said.

McKenzie said cruise companies are interested in exploring ways to extend Caribbean itineraries and lengths of deployment but are primarily relying on destination officials to formulate itinerary options.

“I really think coming together as a region, coming together as destinations, thinking about an itinerary, the cruise lines would be willing to look into marketing that,” McKenzie said. “I believe we would be happy to facilitate that meeting with the lines to [discuss] how we could solve this problem.”

Still, she said coordination and cooperation among regional destinations would be a key element in extending Caribbean deployment.

“I can’t market that myself and I don’t think one destination can say, ‘Bring more calls to my destination’ and ignore the others, because of course a cruise is multi-destination,” she said.

“It is important for the region to come together,” to take the lead in working with cruise lines to craft new itineraries, said Wendy McDonald, regional vice president, government relations, Caribbean at Royal Caribbean Group.

“Destinations usually come to us individually to ask about more calls, how can you invest in our country, etc.,” McDonald said.

“[But] there is power in numbers,” she said. Currently, only a handful of Caribbean destinations regularly “meet with our leadership and provide updates on what they’re doing,” said McDonald.

She continued, “It’s important to have visibility not just when we meet at certain conferences and have one-on-one for 20 minutes, but to really take the time and come together,” McDonald said.

“How can [destinations] work together, how can you leverage what each other has and come to us with a proposal for how we can extend those itineraries.”

Kenneth Bryan, the Cayman Islands tourism minister and CTO’s chairman, said cruise lines bear some responsibility in extending Caribbean deployments. Cruise ship travelers may simply find other regions to be “more attractive” during the summer months, he suggested.

“You have to offer some competitive options,” Bryan said. “You know your client more than we know your client [so] what kind of ideas can [cruise lines] come up with and work with our stakeholders in our jurisdictions?"

“Minister, I don’t think we can do this ourselves,” responded McKenzie. “We need [destinations] as partners to come up with those ideas,” she said.

“We have [passenger] source markets that are interested in going to the Baltics where it’s normally colder in the summer, so you can’t compete with that. However, it doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to creatively think of what might [cruise travelers] to the Caribbean in the summer season.”

McKenzie noted that while Carnival Cruise Lines is among the operators that sail in the Caribbean year-round, the company’s ships aren’t sailing into the southern Caribbean region as frequently as in past years.

“I’ve had discussion with destinations about that and it’s mostly because our carbon footprint challenges, we cannot get far south,” she said.

“But again, we all agree on the challenges and [should] go through each challenge collectively, not as cruise lines, but as destination partners,” she said.

“I’m a Caribbean national and I’d like to see our region as a whole grow even more, but I think it has to be a collective dialog,” said McKenzie. “My CEO has said to me he is open to solutions if something is presented to us.”

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