1. Introduction
The cruise ship industry has been the fastest growing segment in the travel industry around the
world, and since 1980, the average annual growth rate in the number of cruise passengers worldwide
has been 8.4%. In 2007, 12.6 million worldwide passengers were carried on the Cruise Lines
International Association members, an increase of 4, 1% over the previous year. Cruises are especially
popular in the United States and in 2007, 10 million Americans took a cruise vacation representing 76
percent of the total cruise passengers of the World and is expected 51 million of them cruising in the
next there years (CLIA, 2008). Nowadays, there are about 300 liners sailing the world's seas, with
further 35 ships scheduled to join the global fleet over the next four years representing investments
over U$D 20 billion. But as ship order book and passenger number grow, so, too, do cruising's impacts
at different levels: socio-cultural, economic, politic and environmental.