Cruising on the Great Lakes Offers New Experiences

The Great Lakes, North America’s “Inland Oceans,” are gaining stronger attention from cruise enthusiasts. This year, it was projected that the cruise program would attract an estimated 175,000 passenger visits, an increase of 15 percent over 2025.

Unlike the massive vessels that sail the oceans, Great Lakes cruise ships have a maximum capacity of less than 400 passengers but offer some international flair.

The fleet of cruise lines is comprised of Ponant Cruises from France, Hapag-Lloyd of Germany, Viking, with Norwegian roots based in Switzerland, and U.S. companies, Victory Cruise Lines and Pearl Seas Cruises.

“We have a real strong mix of international cruise lines that provide an interesting balance, an interesting mix of product, and an interesting mix of clients,” says Stephen Burnett, Executive Director, Great Lakes Cruise Association (GLCA).

“We crossed a very important line when Viking came to the Great Lakes because where Viking goes, the rest of the world goes,” Burnett said.

The fleet mix has also brought change to the association’s profile. Years ago everything was done in English, said Burnett, but the language mix now includes German, French, Italian, Japanese, and Cantonese.

The association has approximately 30 ports that are “cruise ready,” and on an average cruise a ship will visit six or seven ports, but those ports get rotated as cruise lines develop new itineraries.

Hanseatic Inspiration offers programs tied to the nature experiences in the Great Lakes (Hapag-Lloyd)

Burnett says the association tracks the cruise season in two ways.

“We view it in terms of the business that arrives in the Great Lakes, but also in terms of customer satisfaction. It is very important that we understand how people feel about the Great Lakes. We have 28 to 30 member ports, and they feed information to me. It is an extraordinary amount of interesting intelligence that comes from Thunder Bay at the top of Lake Superior, Kingston, and down towards Cornwall, Ontario.”

From the information gleaned, Burnett says, “We understand our guests are two things, very happy in what they see, and there is a great amount of surprise in what they see. Many of the guests that come from afar don’t realize how big the lakes are, and the biggest surprise is they are walking around the deck, and they don’t see land. So it is vast inland oceans.”

Burnett explains that those “oceans” offer a number of surprises, not only from the geography but also when clients find places like Toronto, where, believe it or not, they discover 90 languages are spoken daily. “It is an incredible amount of polyglot communities who have immigrated here, and they are quite fascinated by the multicultural aspect of how Toronto really works. They are amazed at the incredible nature-based geography of the north shore of Lake Superior. They didn’t imagine how incredibly wild and virgin the territory is.”

Victory I arriving in the cosmopolitan city of Toronto (Victory Cruise Lines)

While the Great Lakes may not sound as sexy as the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, the reasons cruisers venture to the region vary.

“Some people have traveled everywhere else in the world, and they want to cruise in their own backyard, so that would be North Americans. So cruising in your own backyard, in a way, is a huge attraction, and for many it’s an opportunity to travel in a region that is very different to some of the international destinations. You can travel for seven days in the Canadian sector of the Great Lakes and be in the same country. Then you can flip across the border and then be in the U.S.”

He explained that, “We also have clients who are extremely interested in First Nations and Aboriginal history, so we have a strong relationship with Aboriginal communities where we can embrace them in the product development side. We get Europeans who are fascinated with that culture.”

The Great Lakes cruise experience is also attractive in the programs provided on the vessel.

Burnett noted that there is a lecture series, for example, given by a retired lawyer.

“He is a political advisor to the federal (Canadian) government, and his hobby is history. So he does on average about 10 lectures on a voyage, and the problem he has is that when he finishes a lecture, people won’t leave him alone. They want him to expand on his many topics,” he said.

One topic of great interest is the story of how German U-boats (submarines) were able to bypass underwater security netting to get up the St. Lawrence River and attack small Quebec villages during the Second World War.

Burnett says, “This poor guy has 30 people waiting in line who want to talk about this story (after the lecture). So the stories of the Great Lakes really attract people as well.”

Ponant cruise ship anchored off Mackinac Island, a popular tourist destination in Michigan (Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau)

On a more serious note, he said, “The world is in a bit of a dangerous place at the moment with a lot of conflict, and some of that conflict is in cruise regions. There is nowhere in the world as safe as the Great Lakes.”

In 2027, the Great Lakes Cruise Association will add a new event to launch its season called Great Lakes Cruising Sail Away, to be held May 4 in Toronto at the port’s cruise terminal. Victory Cruise Lines will have a ship at the terminal during the event. It will be an annual event and will move to different ports each year.

The association is also looking to add Cornwall, located in eastern Ontario, Canada, to its ports’ list.

“Cornwall has an extraordinary amount of attractions, including strong Aboriginal First Nations culture,” said Burnett.

He also noted the association has a focus on Lake Superior’s north shore, “which we call Lake Superior North Shore Inside Passage. There is a group of islands there that make like an archipelago, so you can cruise inside those islands where there are five small communities that have wonderful things to see and do. So we are very much trying to expand our product.”