Don’t say Royal Caribbean is just a cruise line – it’s changing, and here’s what it means for Australia

• Royal Caribbean is moving towards a new vision, dominating every aspect of your vacation.
• The company is focused on private destinations, shorter itineraries and big ships.
• This will be soon be seen in Australia with the introduction of Lelepa as a private destination.

Royal Caribbean is evolving, and Australian cruisers are a key part of its plans moving forward. The line highlights how they are ‘turning a cruise company into a vacation company’ as they move into a new era.

Over the last five there were two key developments that led to Royal Caribbean to accelerate towards its vision of a ‘vacation company’ rather than just a cruise line.

The first was the pandemic, which squeezed profits out of cruise lines and tightened the balance sheets for the years ahead. The second is the wave of anti-cruise sentiment, particularly across Europe, but also in key destinations closer to home for Royal Caribbean such as Mexico, Hawaii and The Bahamas. With more countries and cities threatening measures such as cruise specific taxes, caps on cruise passengers and more, the world’s big big ship operator needed to do something.

It did. But not what you’d expect.

Instead of building smaller, it built bigger. But importantly, it also built island resorts to house them.

The big changes

Through transitioning towards a total ‘vacation’ offering, which involves upgrading ship facilities even further to make ships the real ‘destination’ of a trip, building private destinations to whisk guests off to and integrating offerings across the three cruise lines of Royal Caribbean Group (Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea), Royal Caribbean believes it can tackle the future problems of cruise.

And it makes good business sense. Taking guests to private destinations means more profits for Royal Caribbean as money spent stays within the cruise lines venues, and largely eliminates the risk of being slapped with new taxes or restrictions. 

This strategy appears to be working well in the Caribbean, where guest feedback has been strong for the offerings at Perfect Day at CocoCay. Royal Caribbean is already sending of all its biggest and newest ships there, at least once a week.

Already, according to CLIA, 55% of cruise travellers are considering private island stops when they’re booking their cruises, and one in four would consider switching cruise lines to be able to access a private island.

Travel analysts have said this strategy aims not just to get repeat cruisers, but also can also capture those who might generally rather opt for a resort holiday or other types of land travel, but will instead opt for a cruise, where they might often find a better price.

Australia’s role and Lelepa

This strategy appears set to follow in Australia, from late 2027 when Royal Caribbean opens a private destination in Lelepa. The CEO of Royal Caribbean has already said, “if you’re sailing out of the Australian market, you will be going to Lelepa”. 

This means we can expect Royal Caribbean to centre all of their Australian offers around Lelepa, and there will likely be few, if any, Royal Caribbean itineraries to other destinations such as Tasmania and New Zealand. 

This is likely where Celebrity Cruises will come into play. While it’s already been confirmed that Celebrity will also be visiting Lelepa, we also know that the cruise line is planning to up its presence in the Australian market, and add a longer Celebrity Solstice season alongside the yearly season of Celebrity Edge.

Silversea is already a big Australian player, with ships in The Kimberley, and new luxury sailing our south coast.

This is where Royal Caribbean’s broader vision will likely come into play, they’ll offer classic sailings to New Zealand or Tasmania with Celebrity Cruises, and aim to sweep up budget cruisers, resort goers, Royal Caribbean tragics and more with their frequent itineraries to Lelepa. 

Cruise fans may start having to reframe how they think of Royal Caribbean, and from now, rather than just being a traditional cruise line, it’ll rather be a piece of the larger ‘vacation company’ mission of Royal Caribbean Group. 

How else will Lelepa affect Australian cruising?

A significant difference between CocoCay and Lelepa is that Lelepa is significantly further away from Australia’s coastline than CocoCay is from Miami’s. If you’re coming from Sydney it’s about 1270 nautical miles to Lelepa and 1020 coming from Brisbane. Miami to Lelepa is only about 85 nautical miles.

Therefore, Royal Caribbean, even when combining its Aussie fleet with Celebrity, and potentially SIlversea, won’t be able to fill up the schedule at Lelepa with the ease that it does at CocoCay.

It’s likely that we could see almost a complete eradication of Royal Caribbean and Celebrity itineraries that go to destinations that aren’t the South Pacific, such as New Zealand and Queensland, in order to have as many ships visiting Lelepa as possible. This will represent a huge shake up for the Aussie industry, and for New Zealand as well.

Will NZ cruise crumble as Lelepa comes into play?

The New Zealand cruise industry has been in freefall, seeing huge reductions in cruise visitors, and it’s possible that the introduction of Lelepa will only make things worse.

From the 2023/24 cruise season to the 2025/26 season New Zealand has seen a 42% decrease in port calls and 40% decrease in unique guests, this is expected to equate to 145,000 fewer cruise ship visitors.

Over the 2025/26 cruise season, Royal Caribbean is set to visit New Zealand seven times, and Celebrity Cruises three times. This would be 10 sailings, totalling up to 41,000 passengers, based on the maximum capacity of Anthem of the Seas and Celebrity Edge. 

If these sailings were to suddenly disappear when Lelepa arrives, that could easily take another 20-30% off New Zealand’s cruise ship visitor numbers, and send the industry further into decline.

Another key factor of why cruise lines prefer to private destinations is that it frees them up from having to deal with regulatory difficulties and complications, as well as paying port taxes.

New Zealand has proven extremely troublesome for cruise lines, with a series of ships being turned around due to strict new biofouling regulations, as well as new last minute taxes leaving cruise lines blindsided. 

While New Zealand is an extremely popular destination, and guests repeatedly rate it highly, the reality is that Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are extremely unlikely to opt for New Zealand cruises once they have Lelepa as an option instead. 

What could Lelepa itineraries look like?

A look at Sydney’s forward cruise bookings could potentially give us an idea of what Royal Caribbean’s sailings out to Lelepa could look like.

For example if we look at Anthem of the Seas scheduled visits from January 2028 onwards we can get some clues. Anthem will sail in itinerary of three nights, then nine nights, then another nine nights, then 12 nights, then three nights, then 10-nights.

One important thing to note is that forward cruise bookings don’t always turn out to be accurate, cruise lines often booking ports as placeholders and then changing them up later. 

However, if this schedule proves to be accurate, the nine, 10 and 11 night sailings are likely represent Lelepa sailings. 

We can assume that these sailings would visit Lelepa, then another one to three South Pacific ports as well, such as Port Vila and Noumea. 

It’s always possible that Royal Caribbean will try and promote overnight stays at Lelepa to double the spending on the island. 

It generally takes about three days to sail out to Lelepa, and two to three to sail back, so eight to 12-night itineraries, with two to four ports appears to be the likely structure for Royal Caribbean’s Lelepa sailings.

Whatever happens, Lelepa will have a profound effect on Royal Caribbean’s plans to transform the region’s holiday market.