Aussies tops in cruising

David Ellis

AUSSIES it seems just can't get enough of ocean cruising, with 1.28-million of us spending 12-million days at sea in 2016, and our ocean cruising industry growing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world.

And while that 1.28-million ocean cruise-goers was a staggering 21.4% more than in 2015, or one in 19 of us taking an ocean cruise holiday in 2016,  it did not include the many thousands more who took local river, lake or estuary cruise holidays.

An actual increase of a whopping 220,000 on Australian ocean cruise-goers in 2015, the figure was the largest ever for a single year as Aussie cruise holidaymakers streamed aboard the vessels of some nine lines operating here either permanently or seasonally, joined others visiting as part of Asian or world cruises, or flew off overseas to join yet other ocean-goers at international cruise ports.

And according to the Cruise Lines International Association of Australasia (CLIA), an amazing 76.7 per cent of Australian ocean cruise-goers actually stayed local, choosing to cruise into the South Pacific (the majority,) to New Zealand, or sticking purely to Australian waters.

And CLIA says the way we're going, it looks like two million of us will be enjoying either a local or international ocean cruise holiday annually by 2020.