Cruise industry worldwide - statistics & facts
The cruise market, one of the most profitable segments of leisure tourism, is often considered the outlier of the global travel industry. While the online travel market accounted for over 70 percent of the travel and tourism sector’s revenue worldwide in 2025, a breakdown of the global cruise industry’s value of transactions by sales channels shows a very different story. That year, offline sales generated over three-quarters of the cruise industry’s revenue worldwide, with travel agents still playing an essential role in this market.
How big is the global cruise market?
After being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, cruises proved their resilience as a tourism product. In 2025, the number of ocean cruise passengers worldwide exceeded 37 million, the highest passenger volume reported to date. With the strong rebound in cruise travelers, the cruise industry’s global revenue also hit an all-time high in 2025, amounting to nearly 46 billion U.S. dollars. This figure was forecast to surpass 60 billion U.S. dollars by 2029.
What are the major global cruise markets?
With over 22 million cruise passengers departing from North America in 2025, the region topped the ranking of the leading global source markets for cruise tourism, surpassing Western Europe and Asia by a large margin. Over 90 percent of all cruise passengers sailing from North America that year came from the United States, making it the country with the highest cruise revenue worldwide. Given the popularity of cruise tourism in the U.S. and the country’s access to many nearby ports in the tropical Caribbean Sea, it is perhaps no surprise that the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Bermuda ranked as the most visited cruise destinations worldwide in 2025, with over 16 million passengers.
What are the leading cruise companies worldwide?
A handful of U.S.-based players dominate today’s global cruise market: Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Line. Although Royal Caribbean Cruises operates some of the largest cruise ships worldwide, the brand’s main competitor, Carnival Corporation, remains the leading global cruise company based on revenue. In 2025, Carnival Corporation & plc’s revenue amounted to 26.6 billion U.S. dollars, the highest figure in the company’s history. Meanwhile, Royal Caribbean Cruises’ revenue and Norwegian Cruise Line’s revenue also peaked in 2025.
Although both passenger numbers and revenue figures have quickly rebounded after the pandemic, the U.S.-Israel war with Iran could now pose new challenges to the cruise industry, amid disruptions to navigation in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, as well as increases in fuel prices and in the overall cost of travel. While 2025 was a record year for the global cruise market, 2026 calls for a more cautious outlook.
