The cruise industry keeps growing and redrawing its map: new itineraries, private destinations, ships competing with yachts and villas for the ultra-luxury traveller, and port cities calling for a new port-call model.
Leading cruise industry executives will gather in Madrid on 10 and 11 November for the sixteenth edition of the International Cruise Summit, the renowned conference that brings the sector together every year at the Hotel Meliá Castilla.
Over two days, a series of panel discussions and presentations will address the major issues facing the cruise industry and tourist destinations. Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company, will open the conference with independent data on demand, capacity and investment; the second edition of “The Great Debate” will see cruise lines, ports and destinations discuss whether the growth of cruising depends on greater alignment between them; and the sector’s top leaders will analyse how deployment and itineraries will change over the next ten years, the new port-call model with afternoon arrivals and overnight stays in port, the industry’s ability to respond to geopolitical instability, and where the next cruise passenger will come from.
Windstar Cruises will explain how its mystery cruises work, in which no passenger knows where the ship is heading until it reaches each destination, and Club Med will share its experience of sail cruising since the 1990s. The programme also includes sessions on private destinations, world cruises, solo travellers, expedition cruising, artificial intelligence applied to operations, the newbuild orderbook, the Japanese market presented by Asuka Cruise, Qatar as featured destination, the presentation of Terminal G at the Port of Barcelona, and a vision of what world cruises would look like without the Suez Canal, presented by the Suez Canal Authority itself.
Senior executives, international cruise line executives, port authorities, travel agents, and industry companies and experts will attend one of the most important cruise conferences in the world.
The event will feature speakers from the senior management of cruise companies, such as Samantha Stimpson, CEO of Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, who will take part in an in-depth interview; Chris Hackney, CEO of Marella Cruises; John McKeon, Founder and CEO of Polar Latitudes Expeditions; Helen Beck, Managing Director Global Commercial at Windstar Cruises; Leonardo Massa, Vice President Southern Europe, MSC Group Cruise Division; Kevin Bubolz, Vice President and Managing Director Continental Europe, Middle East and Africa at Norwegian Cruise Line; Andreas Nüssel, Managing Director UK & EMEA at Silversea; Juan Trescastro, Vice President of Itinerary Planning, Destinations and Government Relations at Virgin Voyages; Omar Al Jaber, Chief of Operations Affairs at Qatar Tourism, among others.
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