End of an era: Miami finally dethroned as world's busiest cruise port

Table Of Content

• Busiest cruise ports worldwide 2019-2022, by passenger movements
• News 6 named Overall Station of the Year by the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists
• Top 20 Cruise Ports Busiest
• Latest News
• Bulgaria and Romania Join The Schengen Border-Free Travel Zone
• Port Canaveral surpasses Miami as world’s busiest cruise port

"We've always aimed to be the best cruise port in the world, but what an achievement to now be known as the busiest," Port Canaveral CEO John Murray said in a statement posted late Friday on Twitter. "This historic milestone is testament to the efforts of our team and cruise partners to provide a best in class experience for all cruise guests sailing from Port Canaveral." Port Canaveral has overtaken PortMiami for the title of the world's busiest cruise port in 2022, welcoming 4,072,396 multi-day cruise passengers throughout the year. Port Canaveral, the world's busiest cruise port set an all-time high with 6.8 million cruise passengers for the 2023 financial year.

Busiest cruise ports worldwide 2019-2022, by passenger movements

In recent years, Port Canaveral has become the home port of choice for some of the world's newest, biggest and most notable new vessels, including Royal Caribbean's recently unveiled Wonder of the Seas — the world's largest cruise ship. For ships that are based at a cruise port, passenger figures count people both when they get on a ship at the beginning of their cruise and when they get off a ship at the end of their cruise. For ships that are not based at a port, but visit there for a port-of-call stop, passengers are counted only once. Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas ― an “Oasis Class” ship with a passenger capacity of 6,780 ― on Oct. 25 will begin twice-weekly sailings from Port Canaveral.

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It handles most of the large cruise ships arriving at Shanghai with its 774m-long dock. In addition to being the fourth-busiest cruise port in the world, it is one of the busiest in the US in terms of cargo handled. More than one million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) are moved at the port each year.

Top 20 Cruise Ports Busiest

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"Many people will still vacation in Orlando or along the Space Coast area and combine that with a cruise, but it really isn't promoted by the cruise lines," Dennis said. Henry Dennis, a leisure travel advisor for Frosch in Charlotte, said Port Canaveral is an easier drive for his local clients compared with the South Florida ports. The drive from Charlotte to Port Canaveral takes eight hours, versus 11 to Miami. Port Everglades was the first home of Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas in 2009, as well as its sister ship Allure of the Seas in 2010. According to its website, the cruise port was voted the Best U.S. Cruise Homeport for three consecutive years from 2020 to 2022. This month, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Port Canaveral's revenue reached nearly $50 million in the first three months of the fiscal year.

Other Florida ports with cruise business include Port Tampa Bay (418,200 passengers in 2022), Port of Key West (198,411), Port of Palm Beach (188,235) and JAXPORT (90,241), all numbers according to Florida Ports Council, citing the ports. Port Canaveral’s cruise arrivals in 2022 made the facility the world’s busiest based on cruise arrivals, ousting PortMiami from the title. The council also noted that Florida ports account for 60.1% of all cruise passenger embarkations in the U.S. The data does not include the relatively small number of passengers cruising on day trips out of the ports. If those numbers were included, Port Canaveral would have moved into an even bigger lead. A just-released report from the organization put Port Canaveral’s passenger totals at 4.21 million for the 2022 fiscal year.

Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas ― an "Oasis Class" ship with a passenger capacity of 6,780 ― on Oct. 25 will begin twice-weekly sailings from Port Canaveral. That will be the first Oasis Class ship in Royal Caribbean's fleet to regularly sail two times a week, which Murray said is an indication of the cruise line's confidence in Port Canaveral and its ability to attract passengers. Port Canaveral has surpassed Miami for the first time as the world's busiest cruise port, according to the Florida Ports Council. Across the four Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain, five cruise ports handled 2.1 million passengers in 2017.

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Nevertheless, the first sailing from Port Canaveral is still a momentous occasion for the vessel as it is the first of such large ships to be offering shorter cruise vacations. Port Canaveral has officially welcomed Royal Caribbean International’s Allure of the Seas as the ship has repositioned to the central Florida homeport to offer short Bahamas getaways for the next nine months. "We have a very active plan for the future," Murray said, with Port Canaveral likely to need to build another cruise terminal in the next three to five years. Murray said he is not concerned about projections in the Florida Ports Council report that Miami will again exceed Port Canaveral in passenger counts by 2027, with 8.40 million passengers that year, compared with Port Canaveral's 6.43 million. Murray said the new ranking is significant because Port Canaveral always has had "a friendly rivalry" with the Port of Miami and Port Everglades, as Brevard County's seaport sought to become the No. 1 cruise port.

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The port overview shows that the facility handled nearly 7 million tons of goods, including lumber, petroleum products, and general product. The port’s capital projects budget includes $78 million in infrastructure upgrades to deal with rising passenger numbers. Carnival Cruise Line homeports the 5,200-guest Mardi Gras, the 2,974-guest Carnival Freedom, and the 2,974-guest Carnival Liberty at Port Canaveral. Port Canaveral's proximity to Orlando also allows vacationers to combine cruises out of the port with stays at the Orlando theme park resorts. Murray said Port Canaveral reached its goal by attracting some of the newest and largest ships in the world and is well-positioned for the future. Explorethe latest travel news, advice, updates, upcoming exclusive deals and more.

Port Canaveral surpasses Miami as world’s busiest cruise port

PortMiami in Florida, US, is the busiest cruise port in the world, handling 5.6 million passengers with 1,185 ships docked in 2017. Port Miami hosts several cruise terminals that serve millions of people. Its website said it saw more than 4 million cruise passengers in 2022 and plans to draw more tourists with its modern cruise terminals. The Florida Ports Council said Port Miami was the Cruise Capital of the World and Global Cargo Getaway. The island welcomes more than two million cruise passengers each year, according to a website for Puerto Maya, which serves as one of the cruise terminals on the island. Port Everglades said it generated $33 billion in economic activity and impacted more than 216,543 jobs across the state in a June report.

Up until recently, Port Canaveral's most famous tenant had been Disney Cruise Line, which has a Disney-themed cruise terminal. The cruise line promotes cruise-stay packages with Walt Disney World in Orlando and operates a fleet of branded buses to make the drive to the parks and airport. The Out Islands includes all of the islands in the Bahamas excluding New Providence and the Grand Bahama and comprises more than 700 islands, but only 14 of them are inhabited. Several cruise lines have bought some of the small islands and have turned them into private resorts.

The nearly 7,000-passenger capacity of Oasis-class ships has given the port some traffic headaches, and with two Oasis-class ships sailing three times a week instead of once, the port plans to address those before Allure’s arrival. Multi-day passengers include those 13 ships but also ships visiting the ports such as those coming in from sailings out of New York that make a stop for the Orlando market as a port of call. They don’t include sailings for things like the Victory Casino ship, which tacked on another 137,864 passengers for the year.

Fort Lauderdale is a popular gateway to the Caribbean, both via sea as well as air. The city has started booming within the last decade, with many cruises launching from Port Everglades. In fact, because of the flourishing cruise industry, the city’s airport sees almost 36 million people each year, up by over a million passengers from a decade ago.