Abstract— Destination managers aim to increase tourists’ visits to natural and cultural cruise destinations. Many of these destinations are at pristine natural environments around the world, with many cruises sailing to the Caribbean. Therefore, before cruise travel packages can be designed, and promoted to international markets, the destination managers need to brand strong selling points to domestic and international tourists. The dominant number of cruise lines tourists’ is from North America. One of the biggest challenges for destination marketers it is to bring traffic online to new tourists’ destinations by creating attractive websites, and online tools where the tourists can observe, read, and learn about new tourist destinations. This paper aims to present the growing demand of the cruise industry as an opportunity for many tourists’ destinations to bring economic development, communities’ sustainable development, create jobs for members in these local communities while protecting the global environment. Meanwhile, one of the challenges for the cruise industry is the lack corporate social responsibility regarding sustainable tourism and ethics towards the conservation of the environment in the ports and communities it visits.

Index Terms—cruise, industry, demand, tourism, development, innovation, risks, environment

Cite: Rodolfo Delgado, "The Cruise Industry: Destinations, Opportunities, Innovations, and Challenges" Journal of Advanced Management Science, Vol. 5, No. 5, pp. 387-393, September 2017. doi: 10.18178/joams.5.5.387-393