In the wake of last Friday’s Costa Concordia cruise ship tragedy off the Italian coast, you’d be forgiven for being put off booking a cruise this year.

It’s understandable that the unforgettable image of a ship lying on its side will see many consumers shy away from cruises, but the CD-Traveller team won’t be among them.

Thinking of taking the plunge and booking a cruise in 2012? We’ve teamed up with travel guide publisher, Berlitz, to tell you everything you need to know on how to choose the right cruise ship

Just last week it was revealed that 2012 holidays are to cost more, prompting fears that many families will have to make do with a staycation next summer. However cruising seems to be bucking the trend.

More and more of us are taking to the water for our holiday: the number of UK passengers cruising this year is expected to rise by another eight per cent to a record, 1.77 million. But cruises aren’t all about the Caribbean, cheesy cabaret, crystal chandeliers and casinos. If you’re after an adventure, why not consider an Arctic cruise?

In recognition of the fact that cruising is one of the most popular holiday choices for single passengers, MSC Cruises has reduced its single supplement to 50 percent.

just ten years the number of Britons and Irish who take a cruise holiday has doubled. But, you might say, wasn’t the number quite small a decade ago? No, even then 776,000 went on a cruise. Now, says the Passenger Shipping Association (PSA) in their 2011 Cruise Review, over 1.6 million of us took a cruise last year.

CD Traveller tells you what’s hot in the travel world

Like the airline industry, it seems that cruise companies have started developing new ways to relieve you of your money. It was always the case that an outside cabin cost more than an inside and the closer you were to the top of the ship the more expensive it became. But most people looked on cruising as an all-inclusive holiday. When you paid you had little more expense to consider other than how to tip and how much. And even that started to be priced in so you paid for it at the point of purchase. That is changing. Now there are add-ons. And most of them are little things but which add up to big money for companies.

In the first of a new series, CD-Traveller spoke to Bob Schumacher, Senior Director UK and Ireland at Continental Airlines – who recently unveiled its new fully flat-bed Business First seat – about the three C’s in his life: Canada, cruising and, of course, Continental Airlines

There was a lot of publicity last week about the largest cruise ship in the world, Oasis of the Seas, which begins its first cruise on Saturday. We thought that since there was so much publicity you wouldn’t want more from us but no, we were taken to task by some readers for not mentioning it.

The publicity by the media has concentrated on its huge size (225,282 tons, 16 passenger decks) and that it can carry up to 6,200 passengers plus 2,000 crew. By any standards this is big. I’ve lived in smaller villages. The response by writers has been to ask whether it is too big.

As the summer ends we are beginning to get a better picture of where we actually went and what we did this summer past.

Both Hoseasons and Park resorts who largely operate holidays in Britain, have announced that they did bumper business this year as did the caravanning industry. Some sites were full in August.

Last year was a record year for the cruise industry in Britain. Nearly 1.5 million people went on a cruise up 11% over the previous year and of these, 577,000 cruised from a UK port.Traditionally cruises are thought of as exotic trips into warm climates. Lazy days at sea with the sun beating down as [...]

I was a little slow in spotting this but I mention it here just because it is different.There have been singles cruises, educational cruises, cultural and lecture cruises and just downright ordinary cruises but a football cruise?
Claiming to offer a first, Costa Cruises have persuaded Pele (a footballer even I have heard of) to front [...]