What are the basic kinds of cruise vacations?

What are the basic kinds of cruise vacations?

Dan Ilves (Dan Ilves, CTC, MCC) gives expert video advice on: Will I be bored on a cruise ship?; How safe am I from crime on board a cruise ship? and more...

Often in the industry, we talk about the different categories of cruises. At the top you would have what we would call Luxury or Deluxe cruises. So within that there are a whole slew of choices from small ships to large ships. Right now it's very popular to think of a Luxury cruise as a ship that is not what we call a mega ship. Generally the Luxury cruises don't carry three thousand people. They will be carrying more like anywhere from a hundred to a thousand people. Most of the Luxury ships fall into that range. It's a more exclusive experience and certainly in terms of dining, the quality of the food, the cuisine, the preparation, the opportunities, the comfort of your suite, so on and so forth. Below Luxury we have what we call Premium cruising, and some people are even now developing an Upper Premium category. In the Premium, you have something that's not quite Luxury and it's not quite the category below Premium, which we refer often to as Contemporary, because it's not really budget. And the Premium cruiseline generally offers an upgraded experience. Below Premium, as I said, is Contemporary, which some people might refer to as mass-market cruises. That would be the Carnival Cruiselines, the Norwegian Cruiselines. Now, I don't want to suggest that the quality of that cruise is anything less. I mean, the quality of Carnival in the last ten years has just gone through the roof. The dining experience, the service level, the comfort is excellent but it's a different level of experience than you would get on a Premium and it's a different level than you would get on Luxury. So those are the three basic categories: Contemporary, Premium, and Luxury.