Watch out, Viking! Royal Caribbean Group is about to offer river cruises

One of the world’s most popular ocean cruise lines is about to break into river cruising.

Celebrity Cruises will begin taking bookings this year for Celebrity River Cruises, a new premium river cruise offshoot that will begin sailing in 2027.

Royal Caribbean Group — which operates Royal Caribbean International, Silversea Cruises and Celebrity Cruises — announced the new venture just prior to its 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call Tuesday. The group has ordered 10 river ships, which it says will debut on the rivers of Europe and draw from the modern but sophisticated look, feel and experience of Celebrity’s Edge Class ocean vessels.

“We’re thrilled to announce our entry into the river cruise market through our Celebrity Cruises premium travel brand,” Royal Caribbean Group President and CEO Jason Liberty said in a statement. “With about half of our guests having experienced or intending to vacation on a river cruise, we know they will enjoy Celebrity’s elevated offering on the river.”

In an exclusive interview, Celebrity President Laura Hodges Bethge told TPG it’s not just that Celebrity noticed a need for river cruises to offer its customers; its customers were specifically asking for them.

“We hear from them, loud and clear, that they’d love for us to have that offering,” Hodges Bethge said. “We have this unique opportunity to make sure that we’re providing [river cruising to] our most loyal guests … in the unique way that Celebrity does. … I correspond with a lot of our guests directly, and my inbox is flooded … with guests that are like, ‘I’ve always wanted to take a river cruise, but I refuse to sail with anybody but Celebrity.'”

During the earnings call, Liberty said that the 10 Celebrity ships are just the beginning.

“This is not a hobby for us,” he said, stressing that the line will likely order more river ships before the first ones even begin sailing. Of the initial 10, Liberty said the first two are expected to debut in 2027, with four more coming each year in 2028 and 2029.

“We see river cruising as an exciting growth opportunity that aligns with our strategy of turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations, expanding our ecosystem of vacation offerings and broadening our reach into adjacent lines of business,” Liberty said during the call.

Celebrity hasn’t yet released details about which specific Europe rivers the ships will ply, nor which other regions the vessels might visit, but Hodges Bethge divulged that, because these new ships won’t have tons of space, the new platform for the line is really the destination and how the line delivers it with special Celebrity twists.

As for the ships themselves, Liberty said passengers can expect an Edge Class experience but with elevated dining, entertainment and cabins, all of which will be designed to keep existing passengers within the Royal Caribbean Group family of cruise lines.

“There’s high trust in our brands,” Liberty said. “Our guests trust that we’re going to deliver on this [river initiative].” He also added that the group will monitor the success of Celebrity River Cruises and possibly look to take the Royal Caribbean and Silversea brands to the rivers, as well.

“As we build up this kind of engine for river under Celebrity, it will certainly provide opportunities for our ultraluxury guests to consider a river experience under Silversea,” Liberty explained. “We’re going to start off with Celebrity. That’s where we think there is great scale opportunity. And then, of course, we’ll be looking to see if there’s other ways to expand it for our other brands.”

As far as price point, passengers can expect fares to be a bit higher than Celebrity’s ocean cruise fares — something that’s common since river voyages are usually more inclusive. In her conversation with TPG, Hodges Bethge said it’s likely that Celebrity’s river fares will be the equivalent of what All Included fares are for the ocean sector, with pricing inclusive of alcohol and Wi-Fi at the very least.

Further adding to the value is the fact that, as part of the Celebrity brand, Celebrity River Cruises will allow existing Celebrity passengers to continue earning toward their loyalty status. And, because all sister brands within the Royal Caribbean Group portfolio allow for reciprocity, you can also use that Celebrity status to earn discounts and benefits when you cruise with Royal Caribbean and Silversea — or use your status with those lines when you sail on the new river ships.

A pre-earnings-call report from Truist Securities estimates that all 10 of the new vessels, combined, will cost less than Royal Caribbean’s new megaship, Star of the Seas, set to debut this summer as a nearly identical twin to Icon of the Seas, currently the largest cruise ship in the world.

“We ballpark the cost of a river cruise ship at around $30M, so approx. $300M for 10 ships, which is the fraction of the spend for Star of the Seas,” the report said.

“We’re not going to get into what it costs per ship,” Liberty said during the call. “Relative to a[n ocean] cruise ship, [river ships] are a very small amount of money. So … we could probably be the second-largest operator, and it would be significantly less money than the Xcel 2 ship that we just bought. So, it’s not something that has a high barrier of entry [in terms of] cost, but there is a high barrier in terms of the execution and making sure we can do this in a flawless way.”

Although Celebrity seems to have missed the major river cruise boom, which began about a decade ago, it’s not the first cruise line to straddle different cruise sectors. Luxury ocean cruise line Crystal Cruises ventured into river cruising in 2016 but folded just a few years later due to pandemic-related financial troubles. (While the cruise line has been reborn as Crystal, under new management, the river ships have been sold off to other cruise lines.) And Viking — Celebrity’s main competitor and its biggest competitor in the river space — started out as a river cruise line before branching out to start what is now a successful ocean cruise product.

Celebrity itself is also no stranger to new markets, having parlayed its mainstream ocean cruise offerings into expedition cruises to the Galapagos.

But, despite potentially fierce competition in the river cruise market, Hodges Bethge says it’s not necessarily about trying to take passengers from existing river brands. It’s about giving existing Celebrity cruisers an option on the rivers.

“My focus always … is, ‘What do our customers want from us?'” Hodges Bethge said. “We want to make sure that we’re providing our guests the vacations that they want. … And then that naturally brings the customer to you. If you create the right product, they will come. … There’s more customers to be had, and bringing more demand is a great thing for everybody.”

Plus, Celebrity’s river cruises will continue to allow children — something Viking’s sailings don’t do. Although river ships are often limited in the amount of space they can dedicate to children’s facilities (thanks to size constraints river ships must meet to fit between locks and under low bridges), Hodges Bethge said learnings from Celebrity’s existing kids clubs will be used when developing programming for kids on the line’s river voyages. Ultimately, though, she said Celebrity generally doesn’t see many children younger than 10 on its cruises, and when it does, it’s mainly in the summer and during school breaks.

Royal Caribbean Group’s expansion into the river sector comes after recent news that Celebrity has put in an order for a sixth Edge Class vessel, which will be a sister ship to Celebrity Xcel — one of 2025’s most anticipated new ships.

The order of the sixth ship and Celebrity River Cruises’ aim of drawing inspiration from its Edge Class ocean ships is a testament to just how groundbreaking those vessels have been. They were the first in the ocean-cruise industry to offer Infinite Balconies, which allow more interior space by eliminating traditional outdoor balconies in favor of windows that rise and lower with the push of a button — similar to a car window.

The Edge Class also introduced the Magic Carpet, a bright orange open-air platform on the side of each ship that moves up and down between decks to serve as a bar, a restaurant and a tender platform, depending on the time of day.

Further, the ships pushed boundaries with the introduction of a multiuse area called Eden, which serves as a restaurant, bar, lounge and entertainment space. With the Edge Class as a guide, Celebrity’s new river vessels promise to bring both a refined elegance and a modern vibe to the world’s rivers.

Read more about Celebrity Cruises and its Edge Class ships: