These 5 Luxury Cruise Trends Will Dominate in 2024
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Talk about making limoncello from lemons: Since the devastating pause in cruise travel during the pandemic, the industry has reemerged with new ships, new itineraries, and new vision about how best to sail the seven seas (and navigate the world’s most fascinating rivers). This is not about recovery at this point—it’s about a full-fledged renaissance.
According to luxury travel experts at Virtuoso, cruising is stronger than ever, emerging as an ideally accessible way to travel the world for travelers with mobility issues but also cognitive and sensory limitations. Matching the rise in solo luxury travel, cruise companies are now offering cabins specifically designed for single travelers with pricing that no longer penalizes a solo journeyer.
And—hang on to your captain’s hat—cruisers are getting younger, according to Virtuoso: “86 percent of Gen Xers and 88 percent of millennials who have cruised before say they plan to cruise again.” Finally, perhaps in response to luxury travelers looking for options that demonstrate commitment to sustainability and regenerative policies, cruises are innovating with alternative fuels, water conservation, and zero-waste dining.
It’s a brave new world on out the water. Here are five more exciting luxury cruising trends for 2024.
Expedition Cruising: More Science, More Luxuries
For years, the thrill of expedition cruising meant smaller, sturdy ships purpose-built for guests sacrificing higher-end comforts for access to ports in remote and often rugged destinations. No longer. In 2024, look for an ever-expanding offering of expedition cruising suited to luxury travelers placing ever-higher value on experiential travel.
From Ponant, for example, Le Commandant Charcot, a small-sized electric hybrid polar expedition vessel, pairs uber-engineered ice breaking with Franco-chic interiors, imported French food, and flowing Veuve Clicquot on expeditions to the North Pole and Antarctica. Le Commandant Charcot also carries a team of scientists on each expedition—another leading trend in expedition cruising.
Pioneers in hosted research sailings, ships in the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic fleet are expanding the Visiting Scientist Program to offer even more opportunities for voyagers seeking deeper understanding with rigorous science on the water, from Arctic ice melt and environmental DNA sequencing to surveys of baleen whales in the Southern Ocean.
Expedition Yacht Cruising
Perhaps the most exciting expansion in expedition cruising is a blooming of luxury yacht expedition cruises. For example, Aqua Expeditions’s 15-suite Aqua Blu is the first ever long-range ocean explorer luxury yacht based full-time in Indonesia, meaning deep access to largely untraveled areas in the Spice Islands, Raja Ampat, and Komodo National Park (imagine swimming with whale sharks and stalking Komodo dragons followed by multi-course meals with fresh, Indonesian recipes).
Also new in 2024, Natural Habitat Adventures’s 156-foot luxury expedition yacht Hanse Explorer carries just 12 guests on its 13-day Ultimate Antarctica by Expedition Yacht trips. We expect that yacht cruises will only continue to gain traction in the coming years for luxury travelers.
Alluring River Cruises with Luxury Barges
River cruises—a gateway drug for travelers who don’t consider themselves cruisers per se—have long threaded the globe’s navigable waterways in thoughtful style. And in 2024, new cruises like AmaWaterways’s itineraries on Colombia’s Magdalena River and expanded Black history-focused cruises in Egypt, France, and Portugal keep eyes on the rivers.
Meanwhile, the peak romance of barge travel—exemplified by Belmond’s Les Bateaux collection of intimate, luxe barges that gracefully ply French waterways—has a new star. Joining the collection in late 2023, the three-cabin Coquelicot—dressed in Art Nouveau-inspired splendor by French architecture and design studio Humbert & Poyet, takes its coterie on an exclusive excursion through Champagne in partnership with venerable Champagne house Maison Ruinart.
Cruise and Rail Combinations
As rail journeys join luxury cruising as a beautifully slow, absorbing style of travel (unpacking the rental car at every stop is so last decade), cruise and rail itineraries are next year’s way to solve the quandary of which to choose. And industry leader Uniworld has just added five new itineraries to its Cruise & Rail program for 2024, including a 19-day journey from Milan to the Balkans and a 16-day excursion Budapest to Venice via the Alps.
Long-Haul Luxury Cruising
Remember the days when around-the-world cruises were an ultimate expression of luxury travel? They still are (in fact, long-haul world cruises have never been hotter), but in 2024, Silversea Cruises unveils its Grand Pole to Pole Expedition, which will spend an epic 125 days at sea aboard the Silver Wind, sailing north from Puerto Williams in Chile to Longyearbyen in Norway with 90 ports of call along the way.
It’s not the longest grand voyage in terms of days at sea (Silversea’s 2025 world cruise from Tokyo to New York, for example, clocks in at 135 days), but it’s the most expensive on record for 2024: Pole to Pole prices start at $94,700 per guest.
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