Steve Odell, global luxury ambassador for Regent Seven Seas and Oceania, has a blunt message for anyone writing off older travellers: don't. Speaking at The Luxury Travel Collection's 'Remarkable Soiree' — its first New Zealand event and largest yet — he argued the baby boomer generation remains the engine room of ultra-luxury travel, and cruise lines are redesigning ships around them.
The numbers back him up. An Australian Productivity Commission report estimates boomers hold around $3.5 trillion in wealth, and the youngest of the generation is still only 62. That's decades of high-spending holidays ahead. For luxury cruise brands, ignoring them would be commercial madness.
What boomers want, Odell says, is space and fewer crowds — and they'll pay for it. The proof is the Skyview Regent Suite on the new Seven Seas Prestige: a A$40,000-a-night hideaway with a wraparound balcony and floating stone staircase that, by his account, "pretty much sold out" its first season the moment it went on sale. Price, it turns out, is not the barrier.
That appetite for room is reshaping Regent's fleet. The line will strip 29 suites from each of three Explorer Class ships to create the largest entry-level suites in luxury cruising, plus a new penthouse and three additional suite categories. Fewer guests, more square metres each. Dining is evolving too — not toward more fussy fine dining, but more choice, since older luxury travellers don't always want elaborate tasting menus every night.
Odell also thinks cruise could borrow a trick from hotels. Brands like Four Seasons and Belmond carry a clear identity; luxury cruise lines, he suggests, could be better at signalling what they actually stand for. And with US$94.6 billion being spent on 81 new ships worldwide — roughly a third of them under 1,000 guests — smaller vessels open up more unusual ports that mega-ships simply can't reach.
As for Odell himself, after 40 years in cruise and stints building NCL Holding's APAC business from Sydney and later working in Miami, he's settled into a part-time ambassador role back in Australia: public-facing appearances, advice on itineraries and strategy, and an outsider's perspective from someone who still knows the brand's DNA.
Why should a traveller care? Because if you're after an ultra-luxury cruise, the market is bending in your favour — fewer passengers per ship, bigger standard suites, more flexible dining, and itineraries built around destination depth rather than onboard volume. Just be quick on the showstopper suites; the wealthiest generation in history got there first.
