Cruise Market Expected to Grow at an Annual 20 Percent Rate until 2010

The United States, Great Britain, Germany and Italy are by far the world´s top four cruise passenger providers with 13 million sea vacationers combined during the course of 2004 alone. That figure, experts believe, will keep on growing at a whopping 20 percent increment into the year 2010.

According to stats provided by Crucemar, a maritime company, a grand total of 9.2 million Americans took to the seven seas last year, way ahead of the one million Britons, 450,000 Germans and 325,000 Italians that hopped on cruise liners in that same span of time.

Trailing behind that pack are Canadians (320,000), Frenchmen (300,000), Spaniards (250,000) and Japanese travelers (235,000). In addition to those 13 million cruise passengers, Crucemar estimates that 1.1 million people sailed down the rivers aboard deluxe ships in 2004.

Spanish authorities expect their nationals to break the 300,000-passenger mark established last year, regardless of the negative ripple effects the February 14 accident of the Grand Voyager cruise might have on the industry in the near future. Experts, however, are confident the repercussion will be limited to a minor dent in ticket sales in the short run.