The World’s Best Luxury Cruise Lines, Ranked

 Luxury Travel Intelligence recently ranked the world’s best luxury cruise lines, using a “rigorously-defined algorithm that analyzes 124 significant touch points.” The algorithm results in a maximum accumulative score of 4,511, with scores reflected as percentages. The algorithm looks at overall cruise line performance. Major factors considered in the ranking include a cruise line’s passion, commitment, management quality, staff quality, investment, new ships and refurbishments.

“Our 124 touch points relate to the overall company performance, rather than its individual ships,” said Michael Crompton, founder, Luxury Travel Intelligence. “It’s all about the cruise line’s ability to deliver: its passion, commitment, ethos and values, as well as the quality of its management and staff. Investment and how well it is executed are also major factors, particularly in new ships and the refurbishment of existing ones.”

According to its algorithms, Luxury Travel Intelligence found Seabourn to be the world’s best luxury cruise line for 2019, as Seabourn managed to obtain a 79.6 percent score according to Luxury Travel Intelligence’s algorithm.

In second and third place were Crystal and Regent Seven Seas, respectively. Luxury Travel Intelligence went on to rank the top eight cruise lines. The remaining five, in descending order, are Silversea, Viking Ocean, Oceania, Azamara and Cunard. As the lowest-ranked cruise line, Cunard earned a 67.7 percent score.

Luxury Travel Intelligence announced it would release these rankings on an annual basis and do so in November each year. It also plans to release a separate report that looks at individual ships and their ratings, which it plans to release in June 2020 with information gathered by Luxury Travel Intelligence on-board researchers.