Ongoing Trends and Challenges in the Cruise Tourism Industry The Black Sea Region as an Emerging Cruise Destination

At the crossroads of tourism and leisure on one hand, travel and transport on the other hand, cruising is an extremely rich concept. Offering a modern and versatile form of vacation and above all a unique mix of comfort, entertainment and discovery, the cruise industry keeps reinventing itself by constantly adapting to the new state of the world. Cruise tourism has been developing at a rapid pace during the last few decades, tapping into even more extended geographies, with some of the most varied product offerings for an increasingly diverse and exigent customer group. Given all this, a natural curiosity grew stronger towards the specific trends and challenges encountered nowadays in the cruise industry and what kind of aspects could be considered as advantageous or even pitfalls for new cruise destinations. Therefore, the objectives of this article are twofold: it firstly proposes a quick overview of the industry as it appears today, with a focus on the trends and challenges imposed by the multifaceted nature of cruise tourism and the complexity of our modern world; secondly, we apply the general takeaways from this analysis to the particular case of the Black Sea region, trying to underline the main factors that should be taken into consideration for a further successful development of this emerging cruise destination.