At first glance, cruise ships and commercial airlines may seem worlds apart.
One evokes images of floating holiday resorts, slow travel, and buffet lines. The other? Jet engines, high-altitude flight, and sleek metal tubes defying gravity at 35,000 feet—arguably one of humankind’s most advanced technological achievements.
In this light, the cruise industry has often been perceived as somewhat outdated, trailing behind the rest of the travel sector in terms of technology and innovation.
But that perception is no longer accurate.
Over the past few years, cruise lines have quietly evolved into some of the most forward-thinking players in travel, particularly when it comes to customer engagement and onboard personalization.
In fact, some industry experts now argue that cruise ships are among the “most advanced smart cities in the world”—fully IoT-enabled, identity-based, and powered by real-time data to deliver deeply personalized passenger experiences.
Many of the technologies and strategies now being deployed at sea offer valuable inspiration for innovation on land and in the air.
And this evolution isn’t just impressive; it’s directly relevant.
Cruise companies and airlines share far more operational DNA than most realize. Both are high-volume, fixed-capacity businesses with razor-thin margins. Both operate complex logistics networks, rely heavily on ancillaries for profitability, and face mounting pressure to modernize legacy systems without compromising safety or service.
So in this new three-part analysis, we’ll take a closer look at the cruise industry’s digital evolution, and explore what the airline sector can learn from it.
To start, here are four reasons why cruises may hold the blueprint for the next wave of airline innovation.
1. The Comeback Story Airlines Should Be Studying
When COVID-19 brought global travel to a standstill, few segments were hit harder, or faced more public scrutiny, than the cruise industry.
While airlines grounded fleets and scrambled to issue refunds, cruise ships became headline-grabbing symbols of the crisis. Hundreds of thousands of passengers and crew were stranded at sea for weeks, sometimes months, as countries closed their ports and refused disembarkation. The optics were devastating. Some media outlets described cruise ships as “floating petri dishes,” and lawsuits stemming from those early pandemic days are still making their way through courts.
At the time, recovery forecasts were grim.
- Some analysts projected that the industry wouldn’t return to pre-pandemic levels until the end of the decade.
- Others questioned whether it would ever recover at all.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Not only did the cruise industry come back, it came roaring back.
In fact, cruise lines have outpaced nearly every other travel segment in their post-pandemic recovery.
- The industry reached pre-COVID passenger volumes by as early as 2022.
- Major players like Royal Caribbean and Carnival have posted consecutive record-breaking financial quarters in both 2023 and 2024, with load factors at all-time highs and consumer demand surging.
This phenomenal rebound deserves attention, especially from airline leaders. Because while both industries faced existential challenges during the pandemic, only one has returned stronger, faster, and, most importantly, more profitable than before.
The natural question is: why?
What has the cruise industry done differently to fuel this comeback?
That brings us to the second reason airlines should take a much closer look at the cruise sector…
2. A Perfect Storm of Demand, Value, and Demographic Shift
The cruise industry’s comeback isn’t the result of one silver-bullet strategy. It’s the outcome of several reinforcing forces coming together at the right time.
First, demand never really disappeared.
Unlike other travel sectors that faced prolonged lockdowns, the U.S. cruise market—the world’s largest by far—escaped further nationwide shutdowns from mid-2021 onward. This early reopening provided a critical head start. Bookings picked up steadily as pandemic fatigue set in and “revenge travel” took hold. In 2023, the U.S. market hit 16.9 million passengers–a 19% increase compared to 2019.
Second, pricing power played a major role.
While hotel rates and land-based vacation costs have skyrocketed in recent years, cruise lines maintained a compelling value proposition.
- A 2023 study by Truist found that cruise vacations often start as low as $186 per passenger per day—less than the price of a hotel room alone in many major cities or Caribbean destinations. And cruises include far more than just accommodation.
- Historically, cruises have been priced at a 15–20% discount compared to comparable land-based vacations. Since the pandemic, that discount widened to nearly 50%.
- Today, it has leveled out around 25–30%—still well above pre-COVID norms and an attractive proposition for value-conscious travelers.
This affordability has given cruise lines a strong competitive edge in a cost-sensitive travel market.
But perhaps the most overlooked force behind the industry’s revival is its changing customer base.
Cruises are no longer the domain of retirees and “silver surfers.”
In recent years, cruise lines have executed one of the most successful generational rebrands in the travel sector, quietly capturing the attention of younger travelers.
- In 2019, just 35% of cruise passengers were under 40.
- By 2024, that figure had climbed to roughly 42% of Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha passengers stepping aboard.
- Millennials, in particular, (those now up to 43 years old) have emerged as particularly enthusiastic cruise-goers. CLIA data shows that of those Millennials who have previously cruised, 81% plan to sail again.
And this isn’t just a short-term shift.
According to recent survey data from YouGov, Millennials are now the most cruise-positive demographic for future trips—suggesting this generational momentum is likely to continue in the years to come.
This generational shift is a strategic turning point.
By appealing to younger audiences through targeted marketing, digital engagement, and experience-focused offerings, cruise lines are future-proofing their customer base in a way many other travel sectors (airlines included) have struggled to do.
And that brings us to the third, and perhaps most important, reason airlines should be paying attention: cruise lines are nailing the customer experience.
3. Cruise Lines Are Quietly Mastering the Customer Experience
Before we dive in, here is a quick but important disclaimer.
The cruise and airline experience aren’t perfectly comparable.
- Airlines are primarily in the business of transportation–getting passengers from point A to point B.
- Cruises, on the other hand, are, quite literally, the destination.
- They blend accommodation, entertainment, and transit into one all-inclusive product. In that sense, they’re more like floating resorts or package holidays than traditional modes of transport.
But that distinction makes the cruise industry’s performance in terms of customer satisfaction all the more impressive.
- If anything, the bar is higher for cruise lines.
- Their passengers spend days, sometimes weeks, on board, creating far more touchpoints, expectations, and opportunities for things to go wrong.
- And yet, they’re not just meeting expectations; they’re consistently exceeding them.
To benchmark customer satisfaction, we turned to the same method we used in our TNMT airline review analysis: mining thousands of verified customer reviews.
We analyzed over 4,500 reviews from Cruiseline.com across ships from Carnival and Princess Cruises, Crystal Cruises, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, and Virgin Voyages to measure post-pandemic sentiment.
What we found is striking.
- Passenger sentiment in the cruise sector not only recovered quickly, it exceeded pre-pandemic levels as early as summer 2021.
- While there have been minor dips along the way (likely driven by overcrowding in peak months and popular destinations as travel fully reopened), overall satisfaction has remained impressively stable and consistently strong.
That stands in stark contrast to the airline sector, where satisfaction metrics have fallen below pre-COVID levels, dragged down by staffing shortages, flight disruptions, and a lack of service improvements.
So, what’s driving this sustained cruise satisfaction?
How are cruise lines keeping passengers happy across so many channels—food, entertainment, accommodations, excursions, and more?
The answer lies in a single strategic shift: an obsessive, system-wide focus on delivering better customer experiences.
But this isn’t just about friendly service or more buffet options.
It’s about long-term investment—building smarter systems, deploying new technology, and committing to innovation at a scale that most other travel segments, including aviation, have simply failed to match.
Which brings us to one more reason the airline industry should pay close attention to what’s happening at sea.
4. Cruise Lines Are Doubling Down on Innovation—Even When Times Are Tough
To better understand the innovation momentum powering the cruise industry’s comeback, and to uncover where traveler fascination may truly be rooted, we took a closer look at how cruise lines are investing in R&D.
And to do that, we turned to a familiar metric: patent activity.
- Just like in our previous TNMT analysis of airline patent pipelines, we used annual patent filings as a proxy for innovation intensity.
- While patents aren’t a perfect measurement, they’re one of the most concrete signals of where an industry is placing its bets, especially in high-capex, tech-driven sectors like cruise shipping.
And the data speaks volumes.
- Historically, cruise operators haven’t been major patent powerhouses. But starting around 2018, and accelerating sharply during the pandemic, something changed.
- Annual patent filings by major cruise lines increased significantly, reaching unprecedented levels post-2020.
What’s remarkable is the timing.
- While the cruise industry was experiencing its darkest chapter, think ships docked, operations frozen, public trust damaged, these companies did something counterintuitive: they ramped up innovation efforts.
- Rather than pulling back on R&D activity, they doubled down. The very moment when business-as-usual was no longer possible became the moment for reinvention.
That’s the opposite of what we’ve seen in the airline sector, where patent activity has mostly stalled since 2020, with many carriers shifting into pure survival mode.
The cruise industry, by contrast, followed the playbook management literature has long praised but few companies actually follow: investing in innovation during downturns.
Studies from McKinsey, BCG, and others all point to the same conclusion—companies that prioritize innovation in times of crisis tend to outperform their peers during recovery.
And in this case, the cruise industry is the textbook example.
Even more telling is the type of innovation being prioritized.
A deeper look into these patents reveals that the vast majority focus on enhancing the passenger experience—from onboard services and entertainment to identity management and personalized offerings.
That’s where things get especially relevant for airlines.
Because many of these innovations, while designed for ships, could be adapted to air travel.
And in part two of this TNMT series, we’ll dive into exactly how cruise lines are building these next-gen engagement systems, and what it would take for airlines to follow their lead.
Stay tuned.
