Nope

Cruising is fun, but I think the assorted lines are under-exploiting one of the most profitable segments of the market.

Several cruise lines run around-the-world voyages. They are always the most expensive trips for guests on a fee-per-day basis. The list price is fairly comparable to shorter sailings, but this is an illusion.

World cruises always completely sell out far in advance, and always at full price. On shorter cruises, the lines are forced to have a very flexible pricing system to prevent vacant cabins. It is normal to get rate reductions of 25% as a matter of course, and 50% off is not unusual. Sometimes even better bargains can be had. This never happens on world cruises.

With all of this in mind, you'd think cruise lines would want to run more world voyages than they currently do.

In fact, they don't.

Right now it is impossible to do better than to be wait-listed for any of a number of world cruises departing in January of 2018. They are all completely full, and at full price.

The lines don't even utilize large ships. They tend to send out small ones, which further limits the number of cabins. These days a small-to-medium sized cruise vessel is around 75,000 tons and carries about 2000 passengers. The usual vessel that Princess uses for their round-the-world voyages is under 20,000 tons, with room for only 750 passengers. It's also almost 50 years old. Holland America uses bigger vessels, but still nothing like the industry standard.

There are people who swear by small ships, but they are crazy. On the bigger vessel I already mentioned there is 50% more space onboard per person than on a littler ship. That means more comfort, amenities, and things to do. They are also vastly more modern, efficient, and less prone to breakdown.

Of course, if the lines flood the market, the prices would have to come down which would defeat the appeal to the corporations involved, but there is clearly room for more added capacity before that happens. By increasing service conservatively, they would still sell out at full price, but perhaps only 6 months ahead of the sailings.

Four years ago when we retired, Helen and I considered doing a world cruise, but rejected it on the basis of the outrageous price-per-day, and less than attractive vessels. Spending 105 to 120 days on a cramped, old ship just wasn't appealing, especially at a premium price.

Ever since, I've kept an eye on such trips. Most such sailings are done by super high-priced luxury lines, but Holland America and Princess do them in a price range that we could swing if we wanted to.

Of these, some are instantly rejected if the ship is too tiny, or old. Of the few still in the running, most get themselves scrapped due to unattractive itineraries. Holland America has one in January (sold out) on a 63,000 ton ship built in the year 2000. That's new enough, and just barely big enough for our tastes.

It starts out in Florida, which is really good, but other than that single city the route misses North America altogether. It also totally skips South America, and Europe, although to be fair it does do a lot of stops in Africa if that is your thing. This itinerary failed for us.

A year off in June of 2018, Princess has a ship sailing from Sydney, Australia (not great for us to start and end in), in a newish, ship of sufficient size (77,000 tons). It has a lovely route, if a bit skimpy on Asia, that covers Australia, Europe, and both Americas nicely. It also manages a stop in Iceland, and two in Greenland of all places. The only missed continent is Africa (and misses Antarctica, which none of these trips ever visits). It is a bit rushed as world cruises go, being only 106 days.

The deal breaker is the price-per-day, and the price in total. We could easily piece together an equally long holiday consisting of a number of cruises, with land segments, and lots of flights in between, and do so at a substantially lower cost, and actually see more places.

But I do enjoy looking at them.