A cruise tourist and a backpacker are usually on the far opposite ends of the scale of travel styles. But are these travel styles completely incompatible or can a backpacker actually enjoy a cruise?
To us a backpacker is a person who is very focused on cutting costs, does not need a great deal of comfort, wants to take a deep dive in local culture and is not afraid of stepping outside the comfort zone. Such a person also wants to have the freedom to decide what to do and when, make decisions spontaneously, be social and meet new people. Cruise lines often advertise with what could simply be described as the exact opposite of this. So is a cruising a backpacker’s hell or is reality a bit more complex?
We have spend about 3 months onboard cruise ships and also a three digit number of days with backpacks on our backs. We travelled around the world as backpackers for three months about three years ago, have visited countries with less tourists than North Korea and been so far north and away from people that there were only 500 people north of us – in the entire world. With this experience we feel that we have seen a fair share of both travel styles and hope to provide a balanced view, of course with some personal preferences.
It is also important to clarify what we mean by cruise. We are talking about large ships with the main purpose of providing holiday experiences to people in fairly pre-made packages where the entire ship is dedicated to this. A ferry proudly advertising their great tax-free shops is not a cruise, and if you can bring your car aboard it is definitively a ferry, no matter how luxurious they try to make it seem. Companies like Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Carnival, MSC and Disney are what we view as “real” cruise lines. Some companies offer what they call expedition or river cruises. We do not count these as typical cruise experiences either, as they are so different and aimed at a lot less people in a completely different price range, such as Hurtigruten’s expedition cruises to Antarctica or yachts in the Galápagos Islands.
Below we have looked at different aspects and assumptions about cruising from the viewpoint of a backpacker.
Cost
Cruises have a reputation for being luxurious and expensive. Compared to a week in Vietnam they surely fit a different price range, but cruising is far from expensive. First of all, cruise ships usually depart from large cities with established tourism and frequent and lower cost airline tickets. Many countries have also adapted immigration rules to ease the process for cruise ship passengers, waiving the requirement for a visa where you would otherwise need it.
Buying the cruise ship ticket itself is also not as expensive as many believe. About two years ago we travelled around in the Caribbean for 12 days on a cruise ship. The total for this was $950 per person, including taxes and expected tips to the crew. This also included food, non-alcoholic drinks, entertainment and of course accommodation and transportation, this is after all what the cruise ship is, a floating and movable hotel. Add $390 for transatlantic flights and the total is not much above $100 per day. In Vietnam we spent about $57 per day per person for the same duration, the main cost being flights. While clearly cheaper, the price gap between shared-dorm accommodation and fine dining is not as big as many believe.
With that being said we do need to address the phrase “all inclusive”. To this day we have yet to see a larger cruse ship offer truly all inclusive as standard. Most services is of course included when you buy your ticket, but most cruise ships also charge extra for alcoholic beverages, massages and spa, fancier restaurants and so on. It is possible to buy packages to include this, but suddenly the attractively low price is very misleading. The good news is that the cruise lines can offer these low prices exactly because people buy extra services, wager their inheritance at the casino or convince themselves that drinking a mojito to every single meal is the best way to enjoy a vacation. As a cost-aware backpacker you can easily avoid this and let all the other “regular” tourists pay the bill instead, something most of them seem happy to do.
Exploring destinations
We don’t travel on cruise ships just to sit by to pool and drink piña coladas, we travel to experience destinations. A cruise ship is a magical hotel where you go to bed in one country and wake up in another one. Sleeping is something you need to do anyway and as such there is no more efficient way of travelling. The downside is of course that there is little room to explore a destination in depth as the time ashore often is as little as 7-12 hours, some places up to 1 or 2 nights.
The destinations also tend to be fairly touristified, so a unique and genuine local experience is hard to come by. Therefore we use cruises as a way of finding out where we want to spend more time later on. There are more or less 198 countries in the world and only a very few people get to visit them all. Spending enough time to properly explore every country is something no-one has probably ever done. Cruises are therefore an efficient way to get to know new places you may otherwise never have visited, and among these find places to go back to later and explore in depth.
It is also completely possible to avoid mass tourism by doing a bit of research. When we arrived in Grenada by cruise ship there were tourists everywhere and a proportional amount of “great offers”. Thankfully we had done our research and knew that there was a “secret” underwater sculpture park a few kilometers from the harbour. We managed to get there with the local bus and rented a boat by the shore. Out on the sea we had the entire sculpture park all to ourselves for well over an hour. And the price for the four of us travelling there was about the same as the cruise line would charge for just one person on a typical excursion.
Social opportunities
With limited time ashore there are few opportunities to explore the local culture. Onboard the ships there is of course a plethora of people, but most are staying with their own group. As Norwegians we are not going to say that we have actively tried to do something about this, but on a cruise you are not as likely to make the same connections with people as you typically would with people you meet in a hostel, share a room with or spend a week with hiking to Machu Picchu or Kilimanjaro.
The crew come from many different countries and cultures, but after all they are onboard to work and have this as their first priority. They will also keep a professional relationship to the passengers, and there is less room for a genuine, honest and personal experience. That being said we do feel that we’ve made genuine connections with staff and more or less all of them have been very kind and hospitable.
Some social gatherings are arranged onboard, but talking with other passengers over a mai tai is not the same as getting invited to dinner by a local family because they found it so fascinating that a tourist had wandered into their neighbourhood… (which happened in The Netherlands). Of course, both kinds of experiences can be enjoyed!
No-one dislikes comfort
Although our typical backpacker doesn’t mind sleeping on a hard bed if it means saving a few cents a night, even this person won’t mind some comfort. The fact that cruise lines offer convenient services, easy accessibility and stability cannot be viewed as something negative. If you just can’t appreciate comfort and convenience because it’s too “mainstream”, perhaps it’s time for a reality check…
Comfort and convenience doesn’t have to come only in the form of soft beds. Knowing that you will be brought to safe destinations, that there is always someone to ask, and that everything from guides to doctors are readily available is something that can lower your shoulders and make you relax.
Environmental concerns
Some backpackers are focused on leaving a minimised environmental footprint. When it comes to the cruise ship industry we might as well get it out in the open: It is not very environmentally friendly. There is often a focus on actions taken by the cruise industry to improve its environmental impact, but first of all this is often actions that lead to economic savings that also happen to have a positive environmental impact. Secondly, these contributions rarely come even close to making up for the enormous use of fossil fuel, food waste and general use of resources. The very unnatural rhythm of sending thousands of tourists ashore at the same time and bringing them back a few hours later also contributes to an unsustainable tourism in the ports of entry. There are of course positive contributions made by the cruise industry, but if you are environmentally aware it is hard to book a cruise without at least a slightly bad conscience.
That being said, cruising is not complete madness from an environmental perspective. Because it is such a tangible contributor to environmental issues it is often attacked in media and accused of contributing to global warming to a much greater extent than other equally polluting industries. If you want to visit a series of islands and the only other alternative to cruise ships is flying, then the environmental impact may be just at big, if not greater. According to estimates by Vestlandsforsking an average cruise tourist accounts for as much CO2 emissions in a week as a 10 000 km flight per passenger. In practical terms that means a return flight from Europe (with one stopover) to San Francisco lets out about twice as much CO2 as a week on a cruise ship. Even a trip from Europe to Thailand, a very popular destination, will cause almost twice the CO2 emission as well. That being said, keep in mind that just because there are other environmentally unfriendly modes of transportation out there, it doesn’t make cruise ships any better. And as a final note: That trip to Vietnam that was supposed to be environmentally friendly because you stayed in an “eco lodge” is far worse for the environment than most cruise trips will ever be, just from the flights alone…
Think like a backpacker, not like a cruise tourist
Many people think that cruise tourists wander around in large crowds, follow the herd and don’t think too much on their own. That is something we can confirm, especially when it comes to certain nations… Put simply: Act like a cruise tourist and you will get the experience of a cruise tourist. Act like a backpacker and you can see a lot more. Does the cruise line recommend going to a particular beach? That’s where all the other passengers will be. On the other hand, if you do some research you might be able to find a beach completely free of tourists. It might require a local bus to get there and may not be particularly well accommodated for tourists, but how is that different from any other backpacker adventure?
A simple tip: No-one are more tired of seeing cruise passengers than the staff on cruise ships. After all they interact with them every single day, all year. Ask them what they do on a day off and get some great tips on what to see and how to get there. You might just get a hidden gem all to yourself.
Conclusion
We are all different and prefer travelling in our own ways. Even after having enjoyed time onboard cruise ships for years we have changed the way we travel, and it is now longer and longer in between each time we step aboard one of these floating cities. After our last cruise in 2018 we will definitively do it again, but when remains to be seen. That some simply can’t stand this way of travelling is also something we totally understand. The mass tourism can be tiring and we all have our limitations in spare time and travel funds. With these limitations it might not be worth it for everyone to try cruising if you prefer the backpacker style. At the same time cruising is a good contrast to this form of travelling and variation is rarely a bad thing. Cruise may be mass tourism, but as a backpacker you might quickly realise that it can be just the same. Take a trip to Vietnam and you’ll quickly realise that backpackers wander around in herds just as much as cruise tourists.
This article was of course never meant to be written as a definitive answer to whether a backpacker can enjoy a cruise, but to provide a more balanced view on the matter in a world where travel bloggers have a tendency to view cruising as the absolute last choice on the list of travel styles. And whether you travel on a cruise ship, enjoy a weekend city getaway, join an expedition, backpack around the world or take a break to see some sights during a work trip: Do not underestimate what you can get out of a trip if you promise yourself to try something new.
