This was published 11 years ago
'Blue nomad' boom: Australia world's fastest-growing cruise market
By James Robertson
Cruise boom ... Australia is the world's fastest-growing cruising market.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
Spectacular growth in passenger numbers over the past year has made Australia the fastest growing cruise market in the world.
Statistics released yesterday by the International Cruise Council of Australasia show that about 623,000 Australians took a cruise holiday last year, a 34 per cent increase on 2010 figures of about 466,000.
"While other industries have wavered in these tough economic times, cruising has continued to expand," ICCA Chairman Gavin Smith said.
The industry was growing at an average annual rate of 23 per cent a year since 2006, the ICCA said, compared to growth last year of just 4 and 5 per cent for the US and UK markets respectively.
Ross Dowling, a professor of tourism studies at Griffith University attributed the growth of Australian cruises to their increasing availability and affordability, spurred by the strong Australian dollar.
"We're an emerging market," he said. "We're not a mature cruising nation like North America. We haven't had this history of cruising which they've had for 20 years.
"Mass cruising took off [there] in the late '70s. When it hit Australia in the early 2000s [...] they'd had decades of cruising history."
NSW was the largest Australian cruise market and accounted for approximately 40 per cent of the market, followed by Queensland with 24 per cent and Victoria with 16 per cent.
Cruises to all destinations grew last year, but the South Pacific remained Australians' preferred destination and accounted for about 37 per cent of all cruises. New Zealand was Australia's fastest growing destination; passenger flows there increased by about 80 per cent.
Professor Dowling said that cruise holidays were likely coming at the expense of domestic, not international travel.
"I think it's taking a bite out of Australian terrestrial travel," he said. "A number of retirees, [who] used to be called the grey nomads, used to travel in four-wheel-drives, [they're] becoming blue nomads and taking up cruising instead.
"Why spend $100 grand on a four-wheel-drive and a caravan et cetera, when for $5000-$10,000 [they] could do a fantastic cruise for the next decade?"
About 2.7 per cent of Australians took a cruise last year, making it the second largest international market in terms of penetration and bested only by the US where about 3.2 per cent of the population went on cruises.
A study released this February by Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by Carnival, the world's largest cruising operator, found that cruises contributed more than $820 million to the economy in 2010-11.
The ICCA is conservatively estimating that the number of Australians taking cruises will rise to one million by 2020.
But the industry warned that Sydney's terminal infrastructure was insufficient to meet projected growth in the coming decade.
The Overseas Passenger Terminal at Darling Harbour is already near capacity, the industry says, making entering into a sharing arrangement at the Navy's port at Garden Island the only sustainable alternative.
"It would be a blow to the Sydney economy if we some of the world's biggest ships don't call at Sydney due to the limitations of our arrival terminals," said Scott Lennon, president of the Sydney Business Chamber.
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