Although heads of luxury cruise lines expressed optimism about their business during the annual Seatrade Cruise Global conference in Miami last week, the upcoming U.S. presidential election is giving at least one of them pause.
Cruise lines spent the conference talking up their strong bookings this year. But the industry, and travel in general, has historically experienced slowdowns around election periods as political contests and candidates claim more advertising time and attention from consumers.
This year's November election could be a doozy of a distraction with the likely rematch between presumptive nominees President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
With an upcoming election likely to attract a lot of attention, outgoing Silversea president Barbara Muckermann (who announced Friday that she was leaving Silversea to pursue new opportunities) said Silversea and others have tried to frontload as many bookings as possible for 2025 to make up for any disturbance expected later this year.
The elections in North America are particularly distracting for the baby boomer market, Muckermann said during the panel of luxury-line chiefs. She said it would likely be "very divisive."
"I expect that there will probably be some kind of disturbance in the market and noise very, very close to the election." She added, "it's too early to say if we are going to survive another Trump election," which was met with low murmurs in the standing-room-only event.
Still, an election doesn't automatically mean a drop in sales. As a former political reporter, and this being my first presidential election cycle as Travel Weekly's cruise editor, I'm curious how sales will ebb and flow in the second half of the year.
With Nov. 5 still seven months away, heads of Seabourn Cruises and Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection declined to comment on the contest and instead pointed out that their bookings this year are strong so far -- as are Silversea's.
And nearly every travel advisor I've talked to has said their bookings are up year over year, and several are expecting cruise lines will put out attractive promotions in the fall.
During the debut of the Icon of the Seas in January, Royal Caribbean senior vice president of sales, marketing and trade services Vicki Freed said that though it's "common" to see a slowdown leading up to an election, "we're not seeing that."
"I think some people are going to say, 'I want to get away,'" she said as she addressed a group of journalists and writers. "I know you're all media, but sometimes it's media overload on all the stress of the election coming up."
She added, "typically, there has in the past been some slowdown during the election year, but we're not seeing that. I think we've all become a little numb to the politics that are going on right now."