Continuing it association with Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), SATTE, South Asia’s largest travel trade exhibition, has partnered with CLIA for its 2019 edition. Under the partnership, CLIA will organise workshop and educational session to further increase the popularity of cruising segment in India. The form and content of the workshop is currently being worked out. During the workshop and session, CLIA will highlight the strength and weakness of the Indian cruise tourism industry. It will also discuss about India as a cruise destination in the world.
The global cruise industry is growing rapidly. It grew from 10 million in the year 2000 to more than 25 million in 2017. And with 94 ships on order today, the number of cruise passengers is projected to reach 40 million by 2025. With India’s overall outbound travel growing at a robust pace year-on-year and being estimated to be a 50 million outbound travel market by 2020, cruise industry is keen to develop this largely untapped and hitherto a very small cruise source market. As of now, around 150,000 Indians take outbound cruise vacation. According to CLIA statistics, in 2017 India had a mere 128 cruise calls, whereas Thailand and Malaysia in the region get about 500 cruise calls a year.
