Explore Resources

The 2020 State of the Cruise Industry report takes an in-depth look at the impact of cruising and the trends
we are witnessing across the industry, including environmental sustainability, responsible tourism and unique passenger offerings.

This UNGC report produced in consultation with over 300 stakeholders, identified five tipping points for a healthy and productive ocean that represent a set of tangible objectives to address ocean sustainability challenges.

This Marine Insight article describes the different types of pollution caused by ships including: ballast water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution, greywater pollution, blackwater/sewage pollution, chemical pollution, oil/bilge oil pollution, and solid waste pollution.

This WRI article highlights 8 ways to build back with a stronger blue economy post-COVID including bluer blue tourism, reducing shipping emissions, avoid squandering a post-COVID-19 fish bounty, supporting mariners, stay the course on ocean parks, farming the sea to feed billions, digitizing the ocean, and not preying on the moment.

This quick start guide provides an easy-to-follow action plan on carbon reduction and offsetting, with practical examples and tips for other tourism businesses to follow.

Cruise tourism research has developed exponentially during the past decades. Global tourism activity in general and cruises in particular are concentrated in coastal areas and represent a dominant part of the so-called ‘blue economy’. Within this context, the public debate surrounding the impact of cruise tourism on port communities reflects a narrative of unsustainable growth, environmental pollution and negative globalization-related symbolism. Yet, the relatively small size of the cruise sector and the over-focus on emissions arguably misrepresents the overall impact and potential of this tourism domain for portside communities, economies and ecosystems. Cruise-related scientific research, as probably expected, offers a much more refined and holistic picture, transcending the somewhat populist public debate on this matter. Based on a systematic literature review examining cruise-related papers published between 1983 and 2009, Papathanassis and Beckmann (2011) Annals of Tourism Research 38(1), 153–174, identified 145 papers, which were subsequently subjected to a metadata- and a thematic-analysis.

Approximately, a quarter of them addressed the environmental-, social- and economic impacts of cruising on coastal regions. A decade later, and following an analogous methodological approach, a total of 305 cruise research papers, published between 2012 and 2022, yielded 161 relevant papers, subjected to the same coding scheme and thematically compared to previous findings. The subsequent thematic analysis, revealed a comprehensive set of issues, opportunities and challenges cruise tourism poses to coastal areas. Following a critical discussion of past developments and their trajectory, a future research and action agenda is proposed.

This CBD, UNEP, and UNWTO report provides stakeholders with the tools to make the tourism sector more biodiversity friendly and more socially just. It addresses the links between tourism development, biological diversity conservation, and development / poverty reduction.

This manual was compiled to provide a comprehensive reference document on traditional and non-traditional careers in tourism and where education/training can be obtained within the Caribbean region.

This report presents tools and structures that can help to reduce poverty and inequities, provide high quality local livelihoods, facilitate civic engagement, protect and enhance the environment and natural capital, and strengthen responsible tourism as an important and dynamic economic sector.

This One Planet guide provides information on the impacts of the environment, the rationale for good practice and suggestions on how to reduce the impacts related to boat operation, maintenance and during marine excursions. A self-assessment checklist is inserted to promote among marine recreation providers the practice of evaluating environmental performance.