100 T h e F C C A C r u i s e C o n F e r e n C e & T r A d e s h ow 13FCCA CRUISING INNOV.indd 100
TWENTY YEARS OF CRUISE INNOVATION FROm ONbOARd SpACES TO ShORE-SIdE plACES, IT’S A WhOlE NEW VACATION Cruising, c. 1993: Small exercise rooms; swimming pools with playground-size slides; midnight buffets that emphasized quantity over quality. A spacious stateroom for ordinary folk? Maybe if you were booked on TV’s The Love Boat. That was then. This is now: Multi-level fitness centers with leading-edge spa treatments; water parks with slides rivaling anything on land; culinary programs including full sommelier services; comfortable accommodations with plenty of room. The overarching difference is that cruising is now about the journey as much as the destination. Once, cruise lines simply tried to make the voyage a little less tedious: a shuffleboard court here, a game room there, endless dining to fill the time. Onboard leisure became an end in itself in the 1970s, with Miami entrepreneur Ted Arison’s founding of Carnival Cruise Lines. By the 1990s, the industry had begun to mature into the sophisticated adult we know today.
Notes the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) in its 2013 Cruise Industry Overview: “Today’s ships offer a new generation of onboard features and a world of innovation, including surf pools, planetariums, on-deck LED movie screens, golf simulators, water parks, demonstration kitchens, self-leveling billiard tables, multi-room villas with private pools and in-suite [hot tubs], ice-skating rinks, rock-climbing walls, bungee-trampolines and much more. [They] also offer facilities to accommodate family members of all generations traveling together, a market that is ideally suited for Caribbean cruising, along with the varying global markets. “From a product standpoint,” the FCCA continues, “cruise ships offer an array of feature-rich innovative facilities, amenities and services that exceed the expectations of a growing population of travelers. Today’s travelers would be hard-pressed to find a cruise line, ship, stateroom or itinerary that did not offer something for everyone.”
8/27/13 5:26 PM