Four Reasons Millennials Are Most likely to Book a Cruise for Their Next Vacation

Millennials, a generation that first cruised as kids with their parents, are now making their mark on the ocean cruise industry.

According to a new survey from Cruise Lines International Association and JD Power, Millennials are the group mostly likely to answer that they “definitely” or “probably” will book an ocean cruise for their next vacation — an impressive 94 percent of Millennials surveyed answered one or the other.

For travel agents with Millennial clients who may be apprehensive about diving into the world of cruising, the survey provided some reasoning behind the push, from other members of their age group.

1. Value
For one, the value that cruising provides is attractive to Millennials who might have concerns about pricing.

“I am pretty cheap sometimes, so everything for one price, that all-inclusive feeling, and the fact that before you go on a vacation you know how much you’ve paid for your accommodations, food, activities and nightlife is a big selling point for me,” said Meghan Jaworski, a 32-year-old auditor from Bridgewater, N.J., who was part of the survey.

Jaworski also mentioned the potential for constant entertainment between the casino, entertainment, and nightlife as a driver behind her reasoning.

“You can go sit at different bars, go hear the piano player, go to another lounge and there’s a comedian. It’s just constant live entertainment.”

2. Opportunity
There are also the opportunities that cruising provides, particularly the chance to see places and do things that would not be possible on other types of vacations.

“You go on a weeklong cruise and they have good wine, all these drinks and craft cocktails, the spa, food, shows, you get to dress up,” said another Millennial surveyed, 21-year-old Kara Yaquinta, content strategist from Miami. “You then get to go to the ports of call where you can do really fun things like jet ski or zipline. That’s the appealing part of it. It’s all those things in one place.”

Ziplining is such a major draw for Yaquinta that it became the highlight of a recent cruise that called at Roatan, Honduras.

“Ziplining there was one of the most fun things I’ve ever gotten to do,” she recalls. “It was so different. Honduras is a mountainous, tropical place and in one part on the zipline the trees opened up and it was a breathtaking scape, the tops of the trees, and you could feel the crisp wind and see clouds over the crystal clear, blue water. It was perfect,” she said.

3. Variety
Then there’s 23-year-old Lorna-Marie Abend of Hamm, Germany, a travel consultant onboard AIDAprima, one of the newest ships from AIDA Cruises. According to Abend, cruises give Millennials the chance to be both inactive and active on the same vacation.

“In addition to theme parties and nightlife are trendy brands such as Moet Chandon champagne,” she says. “Cocktail and sushi-making workshops provide a learning experience. And shore excursions are exactly what adventure-seeking Millennials are looking for. For example, you can go biking, canyoning or on a tour in an open-air ATV.”

4. Flexibility
And for 26-year-old teacher and football coach from Woodstock, Georgia, Scott Bagwill, cruising provides him the opportunity to travel solo while still being able to participate in a community. After going on 10 Carnival Cruise Line sailings, he did his first solo cruise during New Year’s this year.

“I was nervous at first,” he says, “but I joined a Facebook group and met a bunch of awesome people, and when we did a meet-and-greet people invited me to have dinner with them, go play in the casino, and go see the shows. Even though I was technically cruising by myself, I wasn’t cruising by myself.”