Cruise season opens with fewer passengers as Princess promises to double New Zealand calls from 2028

New Zealand's 2026/27 cruise season has opened in Auckland. The Crown Princess sailed into the Waitematā Harbour on Saturday morning. The ship carries about 3,080 guests and was finishing a 114-day world cruise.

Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston said more than 200,000 cruise passengers were expected to visit between now and the end of June, RNZ reported. Tātaki Auckland Unlimited expects the sector to put more than $200 million into Auckland's economy this season. Its director, Annie Dundas, said passenger numbers were still below the levels of previous years.

The better news for the industry is two seasons away. Princess Cruises plans to double its New Zealand port calls from the 2028/29 season. It will visit nine ports. The eight named in RNZ's report are Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Lyttelton, Dunedin, Picton, Napier and Timaru, and Princess will add scenic cruising through Fiordland. Princess said the larger schedule would make it New Zealand's biggest cruise operator.

That would come after a steep fall. New Zealand had 1,115 port calls in 2023/24, Australian trade outlet Cruise Passenger reported. The New Zealand Cruise Association's port schedule had recorded 662 so far for 2025/26. The port and sailing figures in this piece come from an undated Cruise Passenger report on the Seatrade Cruise Global conference in Miami. They are not a current count.

The big American lines have cut back hardest. Royal Caribbean has six New Zealand cruises in 2026/27 and 25 to the South Pacific. In its scheduled 2021/22 season it had 22 New Zealand cruises, a 72% drop.

At the Miami conference, the New Zealand Cruise Association gave several reasons for the decline, Cruise Passenger reported:

• the risk of ships being caught by biofouling rules
• regulatory uncertainty, including a possible ban on cruise ships in Milford Sound
• rising costs
• a view among cruise executives that New Zealand is a difficult place to operate

The association said "New Zealand is now the most expensive place in the world for a cruise ship to visit". Its chief executive, Jacqui Lloyd, warned that cruise numbers were falling in New Zealand while they grew strongly elsewhere. One proposed fix for the biofouling problem is a hull-cleaning station in Auckland, where divers would inspect and decontaminate ships in port.

Most Royal Caribbean and Carnival New Zealand cruises now run nine nights, which leaves time for three ports and some scenic cruising. Five- or six-port trips used to be more common.

What travellers should know

The line you choose decides how much of the country you see. Princess is offering nine New Zealand sailings of about two weeks for 2026/27. It also has five-day trips that call only at Auckland and Tauranga. Celebrity has eight sailings, none shorter than 11 nights, against nine nights and about three ports on most Royal Caribbean and Carnival trips.

Check the full port list before you pay a deposit, not only the headline route. If Milford Sound is the reason you're going, remember that the industry has warned a ban there is possible. Look at what your cruise contract says about substitute ports or scenic stops if a call is cancelled.

If you want the extra port calls Princess has promised, they don't start until the 2028/29 season. Princess has not yet published sailing dates or fares for them.