Cruising is a growing phenomenon in most countries. Over 20 million people cruised in 2012 in nearly 300 cruise ships. The rate of growth is high in most countries. Australia is one of the fastest growing, having grown almost 20% on average per year for the last 10 years.
Family history too has enjoyed rapid growth for a number of decades. There are probably several thousand family history societies in the world, with hundreds of thousands of members. Major interest web sites like Ancestry, Findmypast and MyHeritage each have millions of users. No doubt there are many who may not be active researchers but who still have some level of interest in their family history.
Themed cruises are now very popular – themecruisefinder.com currently lists over 500 themed cruises and no doubt there are many more not listed there. These may be one off or run regularly by the one company. We have noted one craft cruise specialist has run up to 10 cruises a year since the late 1990s.
Genealogy cruising has been growing too in recent years – part of the wider growth in themed cruising.
- cruise lines have on occasions over the last 20-30 years contracted expert genealogy speakers for their own program
- specialist genealogy cruises have been run regularly since 2004 by several US companies, mainly but not exclusively out of North America
- Unlock the Past has run regular history-genealogy conferences at sea since early 2011
Learn more about genealogy cruising
