The number of Kiwis taking a cruise dropped in 2025, attributed to less accessibility rather than a lack of cruise demand, due to reduced close-to-home cruise options.
Cruise Lines International Association’s (CLIA) 2025 Source Market Report for New Zealand found that 62,000 Kiwis took an ocean cruise during 2025; down 22.3% on 2024 when 80,200 sailed.
House of Travel’s gm cruise Jeff Leckey says these numbers are understandable, given the lack of homeporting.
CLIA’s Australasia executive director Joel Katz builds on this, saying regulatory challenges and rising costs are impacting New Zealand’s ability to attract cruise ships, and this has affected the choices of Kiwi cruisers.
And while there won’t be much change short term in regards to this, Leckey is positive about what 2027 holds, pointing out that Carnival, Azamara, NCL, Celebrity and Holland America will be visiting New Zealand.
“The Carnival cruises from Auckland in 2027 have sort of created a bit of a bubble of homeport cruising again, and so we’ve seen a huge uplift in people booking those, taking advantage of those Auckland-Auckland departures, particularly as they include some school holiday dates.”
The future, says Leckey, looks a little bit brighter. “But we do need some more cruise lines to commit to an ex New Zealand season.”
. . . Long-haul Up
At the other end of the spectrum, CLIA’s data shows the number of New Zealanders who cruised in long-haul destinations increased 3.6% to 28,700 in 2025, with 46.3% of cruising Kiwis now sailing outside the local region.
“New Zealand has yet to achieve the cruise growth being experienced in other markets around the world, but the data confirms Kiwi cruise fans are still keen to sail and they’re happy to fly elsewhere when their options are limited at home,” says Katz.
In fact, Katz says Kiwis’ swing towards long-haul cruises is in direct response to reduced options in local waters. Long-haul cruising has always been popular for House of Travel, says Leckey.
“We’ve always over indexed in that UK, Europe, Asia, Alaska space,” he says. The research also found that the average cruise taken by a Kiwi was 9.9 days in 2025, up from 9.7 days in 2024, while the average age of a New Zealand cruise passenger in 2025 was 53.9 years, an increase on the average of 50.8 years in 2024.
