Reader Postcard
Dominates market with almost 40 per cent of all itineraries
Chris Millikan shares his experiences and highlights from a cruise to Portugal’s Algarve.
There are new itineraries everywhere. River cruising is on the rise. Ships are on the move in Europe. Business is up in Australia. Double- digit growth is showing up in Asia. Sometimes, the Caribbean gets lost in the shuffle.
The majority of people who cruise are from North America. The majority of North Americans who cruise still go to the Caribbean, a sea mecca that includes ports in Florida, Mexico and the Bahamas. At the Cruise Lines International Association, the umbrella organization for the cruise lines, the numbers tell the story for 2011. Here is the CLIA’s assessment: “The industry’s growth is headlined by the Caribbean, which continues to rank as the dominant cruise destination, accounting for 39.8 per cent of all itineraries.”
While 39.8 per cent of the world’s cruise itineraries is a big number, it must be tempered by the fact that in the Caribbean there are many three- and four- day cruises that you’ll seldom, if ever, find in other parts of the world.
Having said that, Caribbean is king.
From the port of New York through to Galveston and including San Juan, Puerto Rico, a vast array of Caribbean cruises depart daily from many ports. While Florida dominates the embarkation market, New York, San Juan, New Orleans and Galveston ensure you have options besides the busy hubs of the sunshine state when cruising the Caribbean.
On my blog ( portsandbows. com) today, you will find a wide variety of Caribbean cruises for the winter of 201213. A good blog for schedules is cruisetimetable. com, which has schedules through 2013 from ports serving the Caribbean, and around the world.
Within the Caribbean you have three choices: Eastern, Western and Southern. There’s no unanimity as to where each begins and ends.
The lines are especially blurred for Eastern and Southern itineraries except that Netherlands Lesser Antilles, Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire are exclusive to Southern routes.
You fly farther to embark in San Juan, but you’ll spend more time in places like St. Maarten, Dominica, Grenada, Antigua, Barbados, Grenada and the ABC Islands — Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. On Eastern itineraries, San Juan may just be a port, but Royal Caribbean and Celebrity regularly start cruises in the Puerto Rican port, with departures later in the evening to accommodate the added travel time from the mainland.
Many writers feel San Juan combines a bit of Cuba, Italy and even South America. Walk the Old Town and you’ll find many interesting shops and even more interesting restaurants.
On the southern islands there’s more of a European feel with Martinique’s French heritage, the British influence of Barbados and the Dutchcovered ABC islands. Two distinct cultures, Dutch and French, exist on the island of St. Maarten/ St. Martin and its cities, Philipsburg and Margiot. Tourists arriving via Air France, British Airways and KLM bring the European sounds of French, English and Dutch to the islands each winter.