Here’s the breakdown:
- Total economic impact on the U.S. economy grew by 4.6 percent to $42.3 billion in 2012, with direct spending by the cruise industry growing by 4.0 percent to $19.6 billion.
- During 2012, CLIA’s North American cruise line members carried nearly 17 million passengers on cruises around the globe. This represented a 3.8 percent increase from the previous year.
- An estimated 10.1 million cruise passengers embarked on their cruises at U.S. ports, accounting for 59 percent of the CLIA North America member cruise line global embarkations and representing a 2.5 percent increase from 2011.
- The North American cruise industry benefited every state in the nation through direct purchases of goods and services, with approximately 80 percent of the impact concentrated in ten states – Florida, California, Texas, New York, Alaska, Washington, Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois and New Jersey.
Key data points for the top five states impacted by the cruise industry include:
- #1: Florida ports handled approximately 6.1 million embarkations and accounted for 60 percent of all U.S. cruise embarkations in 2012. Florida businesses received $7 billion, or 36 percent of the direct expenditures generated by the cruise industry in the U.S.
- #2: California cruise ports combined generated just under 837,000 passenger embarkations during 2012, 8.3 percent of total U.S. embarkations. As a result of the activity of the cruise industry, direct expenditures generated total economic impacts of 42,833 jobs and $2.4 billion in income throughout the California economy during 2012
- #3: The primary cruise port in Texas is Galveston, which had 604,000 embarkations, or 6 percent of total U.S. cruise embarkations, in 2012. Cruise activity in Texas accounted for $1.24 billion in direct spending and 19,745 jobs paying $1.1 billion in income.
- #4: New York accounted for 6.3 percent of the industry’s direct expenditures with $1.24 billion – and this spending generated an estimated 16,342 jobs paying $944 million in income.
- #5: Alaska ports received about 3.55 million cruise passenger visits, approximately 65 percent of all port-of-call cruise passenger visits at U.S. ports. Direct expenditures in Alaska generated total economic impacts of 22,632 jobs and $1.03 billion in income during 2012.
More facts on the cruise economy can be seen here.
Source: CLIA
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