Cruiseships of the future are going to look very different based on the visions that Singaporean tertiary students conjured up for Royal Caribbean International’s design competition.
Entitled Brainwaves: Reimagining the Future of Cruising, the contest asked the youths to design vessels featuring what they would want onboard if they were to go cruising in a decade or so.
Current cruiseship staples such as entertainment venues, plush bars and stately dining rooms were tossed overboard and replaced by holographic theatres, underwater and rainforest biodiversity surroundings, and plenty of hi-tech virtual and augmented reality facilities.
Active imaginations
Clearly the cruise industry’s next generation of passengers want to lead very active lives onboard as sports and other action facilities, often with strong connections to the sea, also featured heavily in the designs.
Competition winner Clifford Goh said his design, called SeaStadium, was inspired by the growing health and wellness trend among today's youth, and he sought to reinvent cruising as the premium destination for traditional as well as novel sporting and entertainment experiences including eSports.
“Combining this with the rise of health-conscious millennials, my ideas allow for a range of athletic activities both onboard the cruiseship and at sea, delivering the ultimate retreat experience for travellers,” Goh said.
The SeaStadium design features a large multipurpose sports and entertainment arena on a twin-hulled vessel.
On Watch wonders how quickly Royal Caribbean's current crop of naval architects will be incorporating many of these new features into future ship designs.
