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Though passenger ships once drew a mostly well-to-do, cosmopolitan crowd, the clientele has become far more diverse. Two factors, ironically enough, are cheap air travel and fly-cruise packages, which have made it easier for heartland residents to reach port cities. At the same time, cruise lines are spending as much as $200 million a year, five times the amount of a decade ago, on advertising and promotion. Perhaps the biggest public-relations windfall of all was the TV series The Love Boat, which ran in prime time from 1977 to 1986 and is currently in syndication.
If a real-life Love Boat existed, she might be owned by Miami's Carnival Cruise Lines, the industry's largest and most trend-setting company. By offering low prices and lots of lively onboard entertainment, Carnival's seven "Fun Ships" command nearly 25% of the U.S. cruise business. The company was launched in 1974 by Ted Arison, now 63, an Israeli immigrant who had earlier helped start another major Miami operator, Norwegian Cruise Line.
With the business deep in the doldrums, Arison came along with an idea for festive cruising. But his company got off to a rough start when his first ship, the Mardi Gras, ran aground just beyond the Miami harbor on her maiden voyage, leaving the 300 travel agents aboard none too impressed. After a few shaky years, however, Carnival decided to take its name seriously and make its boats so busy with activity that passengers would barely want to disembark at exotic ports. One spur was the rising cost of fuel in the 1970s, which boosted operating costs drastically. Says Arison's son Micky, 38, who serves as chief executive: "It started to make sense not to go full speed to ports of call. So we went slower and had fun along the way." Carnival installed casinos in all its ships, splashed the liners with bright colors and offered Las Vegas- style feathers-and-flesh shows.
Carnival's party atmosphere makes its ships popular with singles, but the smorgasbord of activities also appeals to a new kind of clientele: young families. "I want to skeet-shoot," enthused Kathleen Hickinbotham, a Fresno, Calif., schoolteacher, as she boarded Carnival's Jubilee recently for a cruise in the Caribbean with her husband Leslie and three children. Many ships offer putting greens and driving ranges (no need to retrieve the balls from the water trap) as well as workout rooms for weight lifting and aerobics classes.
"The key word is choice," says Tor Stangeland, captain of the Sovereign of the Seas, which contains five nightclubs and two cinemas. "People want to have a large selection of things to do. That is why our ship got so big." One of the most fully packed ships is Cunard's QE2, which returned to the sea last April after a $162 million refitting. Among the ship's amenities are a 24-hour IBM computer center with 16 terminals, a branch of Harrods, an American Express bank and a shopping promenade of boutiques, including Gucci, Dunhill and H. Stern.