The focus of the 67th MedCruise General Assembly was year-round cruising in the Mediterranean, with a number of benefits and challenges highlighted during the gathering of partners in Šibenik, Croatia.
By Frances Gannon
Although the bulk of passenger flow still occurs during the warmer months, year-round cruising has been an established pattern in the Mediterranean for decades. In recent years, with overall passenger numbers rising, off-season volumes have been swelling concurrently. The pace of growth is restricted only by capacity deployed and the limited range of products offered.
The longer-term potential of this trend has been recognised, as cruise is no longer regarded as a summer-only option. Lines such as MSC Cruises have already committed major resources to the Mediterranean year round, and will continue to expand their presence. Ports and destinations, benefitting from traffic during cooler months of the year, are working hard to develop their off-season operations.
The topical discussion of year-round cruising in the Mediterranean during the recent autumn gathering of MedCruise partners in Šibenik was perhaps the most focused since the Third Seatrade Winter Cruise Forum, held in Cartagena, Spain, back in January 2015. At that event, Giora Israel, then senior vice president of global port and destination development at Carnival Corporation, urged the industry not to use the phrase “winter cruising” but “year-round cruising” as a more appropriate term to describe the emergent phenomenon in the industry.
Israel might have been ahead of his time in this matter. Since then, the very concept of cruise has undergone a dramatic re-definition, to the extent that it is no longer associated exclusively with warmer months of Caribbean and Mediterranean itineraries. Cruise products are now offered year round all over the world. The ascent of expedition and Christmas cruises, among others, has helped the product evolve into an all-year offering.
The industry has come a long way since. Year-round cruising is now a matter of course, not an exception. For various reasons, the Mediterranean has become a prime off-season destination. There are multiple benefits from cruising in cooler months; there are also a few challenges.
Off-season benefits
One obvious benefit of off-season cruising is that it addresses the issue of overtourism in many parts of the Mediterranean, making cruises more sustainable. It may also offer better experiences to customers.
“When you look at the ports of call that are considered for off-season or year-round cruising, you’ll have fewer tourists, which is sustainable. It’s better for the communities we visit, better for the guest experience,” said Ryan Baird, manager of destination communication, guest experience, and product development at Holland America Line.
In the era of global warming, when summers are becoming unbearably hot in most parts of the Mediterranean, off-season cruising is becoming more attractive. “In winter, it is less crowded and it is not as hot. There is nothing worse than going around the Colosseum in 45 degrees of heat and you’re with 100,000 people on the same day. There’s nothing worse than being in a crowded city on a day when there are seven or eight cruise ships calling at its port. These are all selling points for off-season cruises,” said Mark Robinson, managing director of BC Cruise Services.
By its very nature, off-season cruise is a different beast altogether. It offers different activities and often different kinds of attractions. “Basically the main season is the summer season on the coast,” said Maro Saulovic, general manager of Gulliver Destination Management Company. “We usually offer programmes that are related to the beach: swimming and other water activities. For the off-season, we focus more on gastronomy, on different activities like hiking, e-biking, ziplining, wine tasting, olive harvesting, and things like that – not anything that’s related to the summertime.”
There is also something more appealing about the calmer months of winter cruising. They are less hurried and more immersive, and destinations may have more to offer. “It’s sometimes difficult to find the right balance between preserving all these historic monuments we have and showing them to hordes of tourists in the summer. Maybe in winter we have the opportunity to show them some backstage features of our heritage which we cannot show during peak season,” said Genoveva Climent, commercial and business development director at Port of Tarragona, director of MedCruise, and moderator of this session.
Off-season challenges
Off-season programmes appeal to a different clientele. For the cruise lines, it is a different segment of the market, a different revenue source to tap into. “The guests are a different sort of guest in the winter,” said Robinson. “So I think this is what we need to look into with the local communities, finding out what is the difference between the guests in the summer and the guests in the winter. In winter, they’re usually more elderly and they’re more into the cultural events. There are hardly any children apart from on the Christmas cruises.”
Winter programme offerings need to be of a different variety. More physically demanding activities like ziplining may not be suitable for elderly guests; e-biking may not be popular on chilly or rainy days.
These and other aspects of year-round cruising present Mediterranean cruise ports and cruise lines operating in the region with multiple challenges, but these challenges are not insurmountable.
In some destinations, shops, restaurants, and other tourist-related facilities may be closed during winter periods, leaving the destination looking rather desolate. Ports and destinations are urged to work with local stakeholders and find a way to keep essential facilities open, at least on days when the ships call. This should not be too difficult, as it benefits local businesses and supports employment. Communities and authorities in and around the Mediterranean region should accept and understand that cruise is now a year-round operation.
The biggest challenge for off-season cruising, from the cruise lines’ perspective, is the revenue yields and profitability. “Cruise lines are for-profit business,” said Baird. “We have to fill those cabins. While the destinations drive ship deployments, we still have to get guests on board. Most of our guests are from the United States. It was estimated that in 2025 there would be 19 million Americans cruising. But most Americans only get 11 days of vacation a year. If you plan it carefully, you could get up to 14 days. That is your entire vacation time.” It is hard to imagine that many would choose to spend these precious days on off-season cruising of the Mediterranean when half the shops are closed, unless there are viable alternative attractions.
Some major port cities with lots to offer, like Barcelona and Dubrovnik, are by nature year-round destinations. Some cruise lines are deploying major capacities in these regions and are doing very well. They do not need much promotion. The challenge lies in attracting ships to call at smaller ports in winter.
Attracting deployment
There was no shortage of advice for MedCruise members on how to attract off-season ship calls. “You’ve just got to look at what’s going to attract the cruise lines in the winter to come to the Mediterranean,” said Robinson. “Cruise lines have to make money. So they’ve got to weigh up whether it is more profitable for them to deploy their ships in the Caribbean or to sail out of Athens in the winter. What is the value proposition here?”
There is now tangible competition for capacity deployment between the more popular and high-yield Caribbean and the off-season Mediterranean in winter. These two regions normally complement one another: in the summer, ships operate in the Mediterranean; in winter, some are repositioned to the Caribbean.
To attract deployment, clearly there needs to be demand, which can be generated through strategic marketing. The Mediterranean arguably has more attractions to offer cruise guests year-round than anywhere else in the world. Besides focusing on history and sights, other equally alluring attractions must not be overlooked when creating demand.
“One thing that everybody probably has is a thing called Christmas,” said Robinson. “What does everybody do at Christmas? What do the cities do? They have fantastic Christmas markets with bright lights.” Robinson believes that Christmas events are a powerful driver of demand for winter cruising. He cited the success of river cruise operators in Europe having transitioned from seasonal to year-round operations partly because of the Christmas markets and festivities. Indeed, much of the winter cruise passenger volumes in Northern Europe is driven by Christmas.
There is unmistakable potential for further developing off-season operations in the Mediterranean. “I think that through working with ports, and ports working with cruise lines, we can build demand,” said Robinson.
He also advised ports to offer incentives to cruise lines: “You’ve got to really offer the cruise lines something. What about offering discounts in winters?” As a supply-led business, the presence of ships will automatically drive the demand.
Attracting off-season deployment in the Mediterranean might become easier in future, as capacity constraint may be lessening. “There are more and more ships being built,” said Baird. “We’re seeing a huge surge in demand for cruising. Inevitably, we need to find different destinations. Well, the world is only so big. So we also need to rethink the concept of year-round cruising in the Mediterranean, for example.”
Changing perception
In promoting off-season cruising, there is a need for a change in perception. Year-round cruising is still widely misunderstood. More than a decade after Giora Israel’s plea, the term “winter cruising” is often still used. This may sound like nothing more than petty semantics, but it affects perception. “We talk about ‘year-round cruising’, but the truth is that most people still think ‘winter cruising’,” lamented Baird. “So how do we change that perception? How do we get the locals to call this by its new name? Well, it’s marketing and repetition. I don’t think it’s a destination issue. I think we really need to have a strong collaboration of the ports and the cruise lines, and market it.”
Year-round cruising is still a relatively small phenomenon in the Mediterranean, but it is undoubtedly growing. Its expansion so far has not kept pace with the overall cruise industry, for reasons outlined here. “Of course, we do have cruise lines that are doing year-round cruising here, but that’s where the destination drives that demand. There’s enough demand for a few ships, but not several ships going to several ports. We need to change that,” said Baird.
Changing perception is a key to this market. “We say destination drives a man but marketing changes perceptions. I think that all the ports have incredible options, whether it’s holiday markets or UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but it’s trying to tell that in a different story,” concluded Baird.
It is worth the effort to tell that story, because the prognosis for year-round cruising in the Mediterranean is positive. “The world is only so big, and so many ports in the Caribbean are full. Alaska is full. So where can the ships go? I think we will see more and more ships in the Mediterranean year round,” said Robinson.
