Great Lakes cruise operators buckle up for a rough season

“Cruising on the Great Lakes is likely to be more resilient than the cruise industry generally,” said Klein, a Memorial University of Newfoundland professor, in an email. “This is in part because of the size of ships, in part because people may become reluctant to travel outside the U.S., and in part because the clientele is not as vulnerable to the economic downturn,” largely because they tend to skew older than the target audience of mass market lines such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival.