Positive results for the UK cruise industry in 2011.
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The Passenger Shipping Association (PSA) released their annual results which show that Brits took a record 1.7 million ocean cruises in 2011 which represents a 5% increase on the previous year. What should be pleasing for the cruise lines is that 700,000 took their first ever cruise which forms a solid platform for growth in the future years. First time cruisers now account for more than 40% of total , so the strategy of introducing more British holiday makers to cruising would appear to be working, and this trend should continue with massive capacity increases recently announced by Carnival Cruise Line , Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises for 2013.
What the latest PSA statistics further confirm is that 753,000 cruisers began their holiday in a UK port, 100,000 more than in 2010, the high cost of flying coupled with the convenient access to many of UK’s major ports cited as the reason for the rise in interest in departures from home ports.
Top destination remains the Mediterranean with a 10% increase in the number of British passengers visiting the region followed by Northern Europe which runs second. The Atlantic Islands – the Canaries plus Madeira recorded the largest growth with a 19% increase.
European River cruising continued the strong cruise results with a seven percent growth as more than 80,000 Brits cruised the European waterways. The number of British passengers choosing a combined cruise along both the Rhine and Danube doubled, while the French rivers of the Rhone and Seine saw a combined gain of 28%. Russian rivers saw an 11% increase, with Asia and China rising by six percent. The ongoing political unrest in Egypt had seen a drop of 57% on the Nile and with the Nile excluded from the overall figures the overall river cruise market had grown by 5%.