The world’s largest cruise ship arrives at PortMiami after a record year for the industry

The world’s largest passenger cruise ship reached Miami early Wednesday morning, a long-anticipated arrival expected to further invigorate South Florida’s tourism economy, reinforce the Magic City’s global and national relevance, and potentially expand who takes cruises and why.

Dubbed the Icon of the Seas, the 1,198-foot-long ship with a capacity of 5,610 guests, entered Government Cut close to 7 a.m., meeting its pilot boat, then docking at PortMiami.

Equipped with six undulating water slides in its own adventure theme park, over 40 restaurants and drinking establishments including two dueling piano bars, three-story townhouses for large families, and a breezy park with over 33,000 plants, it hopes to attract a wide variety of travelers.

Icon is decades in the making, the Miami-headquartered owner Royal Caribbean International has frequently said. “There are pieces and parts of everything we’ve built over the years that you will find on Icon,” said Jay Schneider, Chief Product Innovation Officer for Royal Caribbean, in an interview with the Herald.

The Icon of the Seas is the first new class of ships from Royal Caribbean in nearly a decade, according to Colleen McDaniel, editor-in-chief of Cruise Critic, an industry publication owned by Tripadvisor. Its last new class was the Quantum back in August 2014, she noted.

Weighing more than 250,800 gross tons, having 2,850 staterooms, 18 guest decks, 7 pools, and 2,350 crew, “it is the largest cruise ship in the world now,” said McDaniel.

Cruise growth means growth for Miami

Miami stands to benefit in some ways since Icon plans to be based at PortMiami year-round.

The ship’s focus for now will be itineraries a week or less, and to the Caribbean. “The ship is really built for those 5-day and 7-day itineraries,” said Cruise Critic’s head. That potentially means several thousand new people visiting Miami each week, many staying a day or two before or after their cruise.

“It’s going to be an economic boon for PortMiami and for the city,” said John Lovell, president of Travel Leaders Group. That includes hoteliers, restaurants, ridesharing or taxi drivers, and retail shops. “They’re all going to benefit.”

Icon will now prepare for its first cruise for the public, scheduled to depart PortMiami on Jan. 27.

Before that, Royal Caribbean has organized an event on Jan. 11 for press and others to tour the ship. It will then do a couple of three-night cruises with employees and then travel agents and VIPs followed by a naming ceremony.

The arrival of Icon will likely add fuel to the already booming cruise industry.

PortMiami, Florida’s largest port, set a record for passengers served in one year, according to data disclosed in December. The port said that 7.3 million passengers traveled in and out during the 12-month fiscal year 2023, which for the cruise industry began Oct. 1, 2022, and ended Sept. 30, 2023. That was nearly twice the four million passengers seen the prior fiscal year.

Port travel exceeded its previous record of 6.8 million passengers by 7%, which was set in fiscal year 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted one of the most popular vacation industries.

The record activity in the most recent year was reflected in several new ships sailing out of PortMiami, including Oceania’s Vista, Carnival Cruise Line Costa Venezia and Norwegian Cruise Line Norwegian VIVA. Since the pandemic, Norwegian Cruise Line, Carnival Corp. and Virgin Voyages have built new terminals at PortMiami. Royal Caribbean Group has a new one expected to open in late 2027.

Meanwhile, Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades is also growing. Last November, Disney Cruise Line started sailing from there, the start of a minimum 15-year agreement between the two. Port Canaveral is, too. Just one season ago it was the world’s busiest cruise port.

Notably, all this growth comes despite rising ticket prices. According to Cruise Critic, the average minimum cost of a five-night cruise from the United States to the Caribbean, Bahamas and Bermuda last December was $736, a 37% increase from December 2022. That’s 10 times the 3.7% inflation rate in the United States during the 12-month period ending in September.

This is a remarkable shift from only a few years ago. The coronavirus pandemic shut down the cruise industry for over a year starting in March 2020 due to outbreaks on ships. Some passengers were initially stranded at sea, and many struggled to get any type of refund or credit for aborted trips.

That hit South Florida’s economy particularly hard given the importance of the cruise industry. Activity at PortMiami contributes $43 billion annually to the local economy and supports more than 334,500 jobs.

Yet the cruise industry has staged a strong comeback. It’s even seeing nearly sold-out sailings for many of the longest voyages leaving through early 2024. People are paying $25,000 to over $100,000 to sail around the world for several months.

And now, Royal Caribbean is giving the cruise industry a big spark.

Making the ship the destination

The Icon has been a long time in the making, its creation going back to at least 2017.

The general plan for the ship and arrangement of decks were all locked in by 2018. The design of the interiors and the number of rooms were finalized by 2019.

Work then shifted to the Meyer Turku shipyard in Turku, Finland, the shipyard Royal Caribbean hired and has long worked with.

Construction broke ground with steel cutting in June 2021. Liquefied natural gas tanks were installed two months later.

It was last June when initial sea trials began. After concluding in November, Meyer Turku delivered the ship to Royal Caribbean.

It then sailed to Cadiz, Spain to get finishing touches and more than 33,500 real plants in its Central Park and then headed to Puerto Rico.

Still, in the two months prior to its arrival, there was no shortage of work to do.

One of Schneider’s interviews with the Herald, on Nov. 13, occurred days after he returned from Helsinki, and right after the final sea trial.

He said they came up with a list of about three dozen requested changes. Some were things like creating more storage space or to move a wall to improve passenger flow.

With such attention to detail, can the Icon help redefine who cruises and make it even more popular?

Cruise specialists not affiliated with the carrier seem to be impressed.

“What they did with the ship is took it up many, many notches,” said David Crooks, senior vice-president of product and operations at World Travel Holdings, a Wakefield, Massachusetts-based global cruise and travel agency.

He had been bothered by the cabins and rooms on Royal Caribbean’s other ships but said the ones on Icon “are more comfortable and accessible for families.” Crooks visited Icon at the shipyard in Finland in August.

With this ship, Royal Caribbean seems to be tapping into people who have already cruised to the Caribbean and have tired of it.

The destination of a cruise is a key driver in people choosing to go on one. But the Icon is so massive, that for many, “the ship itself is a destination,” said McDaniel. Meaning, people may opt to stay on the ship the whole trip.

Lovell thinks the Icon could spur a lot of innovation in the sector, particularly for big ships.

The Icon “gives you this open sense of space. You don’t feel confined,” he said.