Gen Z and millennials are saving the cruise industry

Bookings from younger passengers have allowed operators to defy the gloom in the rest of the travel sector.

- Stephanie Stacey

A 2024 photo of tourists on the deck of the cruise ship Brilliance of the Seas. Cruise ships have been growing over time to accommodate more passengers and more amenities. The size of the world's largest cruise ships has doubled since 2000. With a gross tonnage of about 250,000, Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, which launched in 2024, is five times heavier than the Titanic.

(PHOTO: AFP)

Mr Thom Puiman's first foray into "seacationing" was a cruise to nowhere in 2020.

The voyage was a socially distanced jaunt from Singapore out into international waters without any stops a short-term solution for an industry hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.

But for Mr Puiman, it sparked what has become a passion. "It was, at the time, the only sense of normalcy for me, and I started loving taking cruises," he says.

The 35-year-old technology director, now based in Bangkok, is part of a new wave of cruise-goers that has emerged since the pandemic disrupted global travel a cohort lured, in large part, by cheaper prices, comprehensive amenities and convenience.

People working in the industry are all too aware of the old joke that cruise lines are stacked with "the newly wed, the overfed and the nearly dead".

But the demographics of passengers onboard the ever-expanding megaships have, in reality, broadened dramatically, helping the sector defy the gloom that has weighed down much of the travel industry in 2025 in the US and Europe.

Cruise executives say older Gen Zers, now in their late 20s, and millennials are increasingly choosing ocean-based vacations, pulling down their average passenger age even as populations in the core markets of Europe, Asia and North America get older.

Almost a fifth of 25to 34-year-olds surveyed by UK travel association Abta had taken a cruise in the past 12 months, up from fewer than one in 20 in 2019.