International cruise lines are unlikely to resume regular sailings to Saudi Arabia before the 2027-28 season due to security concerns and vessel repositioning linked to geopolitical tensions in the Red Sea, Cruise Saudi CEO told Arabian Business.
“We’re still sort of affected by the geopolitical situation, and many of the international cruise lines have repositioned their cruise vessels,” Clasen told Arabian Business on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh. “There are only very few occasional calls from ships passing by. There’s no seasonal deployment other than our own.”
The chief executive said most global operators had removed the Red Sea and Gulf routes from their itineraries following rising tensions in the region and are not expected to return in the near term.
“The cruise industry is an industry with extremely long lead times,” he said. “Usually cruise lines do the itinerary planning two years out, sometimes even three years, and now that they have repositioned away from the region, they will not reposition again.”
Clasen said Cruise Saudi is now in discussions with several operators about redeployment, but any meaningful recovery is unlikely before the 2027-28 season.
“There is definitely high interest, but that’s for the season 27-28,” he said. “We will not see, most likely not see, much traffic next year other than transit calls.”
Cruise Saudi, a subsidiary of the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, was established to build the domestic cruise ecosystem as part of Saudi Arabia’s tourism diversification agenda under Vision 2030. Its flagship brand, AROYA Cruises, launched commercial operations this year with regional itineraries in the Red Sea and Mediterranean.
He said despite the short-term slowdown in foreign calls, domestic demand remained strong.
“We had about 140,000 passengers so far,” he said. “From international cruise lines, the numbers are very low… after the 2022-23 winter season, we had 200,000 passengers, and we’re far from that.”
He added that while global operators were cautious, the long-term outlook for Saudi cruising remained positive.
“We have a lot of interest from the cruise line industry when we meet them at events,” he said. “But this is for, as I said, two to three years.”
Saudi Arabia aims to attract 1.3 million cruise passengers annually by 2035 as part of a plan to develop its Red Sea coastline into a global tourism hub.
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