ABSTRACT
Maritime and coastal tourism is recognized as an economic activity with significant contribution to European economy and furthermore as “one of five focus areas for delivering sustainable growth and jobs in the blue economy” (COM (2014)86). Maritime tourism includes a wide range of activities, but cruise tourism and yachting are the largest segments under this umbrella term. The cruise tourism sector is an interesting case of a globalized industry in an environment of international competition, capital mobility and labor migration (Douglas and Douglas, 2004; Wood, 2000). Wild and Dearing (2000) refer to the sector as a blend of transport, tourism and leisure. To that extent, there is a limited number of available definitions describing industry’s structure, boundaries and markets, whilst the existed ones lack clarity and as such the activity stands at the margin of the tourism and shipping industry. Despite that, what has been widely accepted is that the sector, even being the fastest economic activity, recording since 1990 an average growth rate of 6.55 percent (Cruise Market Watch, 2015), lacks scientific attention and thus relevant research is fragmented (Papathanassis and Beckmann, 2011). The generated economic impact is at the center of current scientific research, while during the last few years there has been an increasing interest towards the study of the environmental effects; mostly on the marine and air environment. Nevertheless, the investigation of the sustainability of the sector requires the knowledge of the structural components and trends of the industry. In this context, cruise shipping is a diversified maritime activity with the operational characteristics of a typical maritime transport service, especially in terms of safety and security, whilst the primary motivation is not the transport of a passenger from one place to another but the luxury accommodation of visitors onboard (Stefanidaki and Lekakou, 2012a). The provision of high level services and the range of onboard activities are characteristic of the industry and as such cruise ships are often compared to shore based hotels. The contemporary sector is characterized by three major trends: Gigantism, Oligopolization and Destinazation (GDO) (Stefanidaki and Lekakou, 2014).
