Cartagena projects a 26.17% increase in cruise passengers for the 2025-2026 season, with 365,214 visitors across 182 port calls expected before June 28, 2026, according to the Terminal de Cruceros de Cartagena operated by Grupo Puerto de Cartagena, as Royal Caribbean extended its weekly embarkation operations from the Colombian city through April 2027, consolidating the port as the primary cruise hub in the southern Caribbean and the most active embarkation point for Latin American passengers who travel without a US visa.
The numbers situate Cartagena inside a broader global expansion: the cruise industry contributed US$98.5 billion to global GDP in 2024 and generated 1.8 million jobs worldwide, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council’s (WTTC) Cruising for Impact report, while South America added 1.7 million cruise passengers in 2024, an 8% increase over 2023, making the region one of the fastest-growing origin markets for an industry that has fully recovered its pre-pandemic scale and begun extending beyond it.
Royal Caribbean, the ABC islands, and the no-visa route
Royal Caribbean operates sailing from Colombia on routes connecting Cartagena and Colón (Panama) to the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao), a Caribbean itinerary specifically built for Latin American passengers who lack access to US-departure cruise routes because they require an American visa. The Serenade of the Seas ran the route through April 2026, with the Grandeur of the Seas taking over from May, and Royal Caribbean has committed 36 port calls and approximately 82,800 combined embarking and disembarking passengers to Cartagena in the current season alone.
Itzel Valdés, Royal Caribbean’s associate vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, confirmed the extension of operations: “Very, very happy to continue and extend this season; it will continue to be the same route we are currently doing, departing from Cartagena or Panama Colón and visiting the ABC Islands,” adding that the ships underwent adaptation for Latin American passengers in gastronomy, entertainment, and onboard atmosphere, an investment the company described as commercially validated by passenger satisfaction data from the current season.
The no-visa factor explains the commercial logic behind sailing from Colombia rather than from a US port: a Colombian, Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, or Peruvian traveler who needs a US visa to board a cruise in Miami faces a barrier that disappears entirely when the same itinerary departs from Cartagena, expanding the addressable market for Royal Caribbean across dozens of Latin American nationalities that the US-departure model cannot reach without additional entry requirements.
Cartagena’s port numbers and what the season already confirms
Cartagena’s port infrastructure supports the growth volumes the projections anticipate: the terminal handles five ships simultaneously, processes approximately 10,000 tourists per day at peak capacity, and closed the 2024-2025 holiday season with 59,079 cruise visitors, a 12.58% increase over the prior year’s equivalent period, confirming that the 26.17% full-season projection rests on a base that has grown continuously across three consecutive seasons, with a cumulative passenger increase of 19.67% between 2023 and 2025.
The economic weight behind those passenger counts reached approximately US$50 million in the 2024-2025 season, according to Infobae, a figure that reflects direct spending at the port, in the walled city, and in surrounding commercial areas, and that Puerto de Cartagena expects to surpass in 2025-2026 as it targets 200 ship calls and more than 285,000 total tourists across the full season.
The WTTC data add one dimension that makes the Cartagena investment case durable rather than seasonal: 60% of cruise passengers return to destinations they first encountered from a ship, which means every new visitor to Cartagena via Royal Caribbean’s ABC Islands itinerary represents a potential independent traveler on a future visit, and the city’s ability to convert cruise arrivals into repeat tourism depends on the quality of the port experience, the historic center, and the commercial infrastructure surrounding both, which is the variable Cartagena controls and the one where the sustained investment in port capacity and destination development produces returns that the passenger count alone does not fully capture.