I’m on the top deck of Virgin Voyages’ Scarlet Lady cruise ship surrounded by ripped gay men in the smallest, neon speedos I’ve ever seen. They stand, grinning, in front of a sparkling swimming pool beneath an Ibizan sun listening to Sir Richard Branson talk to his long-time friend Boy George on stage.
“If you’re uptight on a Virgin cruise,” Branson, the now 74-year-old business magnate and owner of Virgin Group, is saying, “then you know where the plank is, and you can walk it.” The crowd whoop and holler. It’s the gayest pirate ship you’ve ever seen.
It’s also perhaps the youngest, in terms of a crowd. Millennials are causing a huge boom in the cruise industry and party boats like Virgin Voyages’ with its “rock ‘n’ roll” sell are doing very well out of it. They’re also causing a huge toll on the environment, which this supposedly eco-conscious generation is apparently happy to ignore, and in the process are creating a new kind of Brit abroad. These new millennial sailors are bringing their very millennial habits on board. Sex, drugs and debauchery are everywhere on deck, from what I see.
As of 2023, over 50 per cent of those booking cruises are now aged between 20 and 59, according to an industry report by the Cruise Lines International Association. While deal after deal is encouraging this surprisingly interested younger generation on board. Gen Z ‘kids’ between the ages of 18 and 26 can travel free with their parents during summer months on Virgin Voyages, and those aged between 18 and 29 get 15 per cent off any cruise with MSC Cruises.
If you’re uptight on a Virgin cruise, then you know where the plank is, and you can walk it
On board the Scarlet Lady, Branson’s old friend Boy George, now 63 and of “Karma Chameleon” fame has decreed that while his “lovely husband” is on board, the “best thing about not having kids is that you can do whatever you want on Virgin cruises”. This is met with much celebration, Virgin Voyages being the most LGBTQ+-popular of all cruise companies.
It’s also one of the coolest, and in an attempt to prove it, Rachael Gunn — AKA RayGun (the Australian breakdancer who broke the Olympics with her kangaroo-style moves) has been brought onto the ship as a special guest. As Boy George DJs, Branson pauses his set to introduce “one of the best dancers in Australia”. What follows — as RayGun teaches the ship her signature moves — is the most awkward-looking dad dancing from Branson you’ve ever seen.
Yet it’s a huge hit. “Let’s go out with a splash”, he cries dragging RayGun to the deep end of the pool and jumping in fully-clothed to screams of delight from the crowd now swarming them.
It turns out Branson — a man known to make a splash in whatever industry he’s currently taking on — is embracing the rock ‘n’ roll theme thanks to this new generation of cruiser whose millennial habits are blossoming on-board. In fact, with the tagline: “Live out your rockstar dreams and be the rockstar you are,” aren’t passengers being given permission for some very big, late nights on board?
Indeed, with bottomless in-room bars in the “Rockstar suites” and a VIP area, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you could get away with anything on this ship. “Why not celebrate 57 years together or a brand new fling”, the Virgin Voyages website asks? While if you open the Virgin Voyages app and shake your phone anywhere on board a bottle of Moet is delivered to your location. Nice. You can also pay in low monthly instalments, which taps into a young Klarna generation not used to fronting cash.
On board the “French Daze and Ibiza Nights” cruise this year, a seven-night, £2,000ish voyage which leaves from Barcelona and is anchored in Marseille, Cannes, Palma de Mallorca and Ibiza – where it stayed for a whole night and a day to cater for those wanting to descend upon the world famous clubs and stagger back on board the next morning. Calvin Harris was playing at Ushuaïa.
Yet the new young crowd didn’t need Ibiza for encouragement. They were up until 8am from night one. “The club shut at 3am — what?” a British man from London in his late 30s told me the next day. “Then a bunch of us got talking in the smoking area and yeah — went back to this guy’s Rockstar Suite. He wouldn’t stop talking about his three girlfriends, only one of whom is on board and didn’t particularly go for the conversation. Also have you met Miranda? She’s mental,” he says, lowering his sunglasses so I can see his terrified eyes. “She’d thrown up in her own bra and then offered me a mushroom chocolate for a snuggle.” He gagged. This is his fourth Virgin cruise.
While we’re talking, another of last night’s unofficial “crew” appear, shuddering with exhaustion along the top deck. Amongst the drugs on board are cocaine and ecstasy and (magic) mushroom chocolates are offered to any new friend of Miranda.
There are only two smoking areas on board (one in a vile room off the casino and one on the top deck) and it has therefore been made completely obvious where you come to find the party on a ship of thousands of people. “I haven’t been to bed yet,” this fake-surfer type drawls in his Southern American. He’d bought the party in Barcelona and then brought it on board undetected so he was one to know, I was told. Someone else has already been told while boarding that they can chuck the coke in their washbag out, or not get on board fullstop. “Idiot,” says Bryony, a Brit whose emptied two packets of paracetamol out of their plastic wrappings and filled them, instead, with the Class A.
While Virgin Voyages is clearly running with its “not just for OAPs” image, there is a “strict” no drugs policy on-board and the (real) crew are drugs tested. Passengers, however, are not and with house music blaring much of the time, DJs spinning decks between multiple bars and even a tattoo and piercing studio on-board, the company has cracked a market of disposable cash-rich, future-poor millennials looking for a great time and a stress-free holiday.
Virgin has cracked a market of disposable cash-rich, future-poor millennials looking for a great time and a stress-free holiday
Here, they wake up in a new place. Plus, the advantage of a cruise, one Londoner tells me, is that you can come alone if you’re single. “Obviously people bang on about the joys of travelling alone but let’s face it, hot holidays are better in a couple, and on a cruise, you can come away alone knowing you’ll meet a load of people on board and you know, maybe leave in a couple, or at least leave having had a bit of a holiday thing — fling,” he translates unnecessarily.
Aside from a cool crowd of Brits used to casual hook-ups and Class As, the rest of the party set are mostly Americans escaping the cotton-bud-haired cruisers in the States, one Floridian tells me. “This is my first cruise, I’m here with my sister,” she says, 40, always in a kaftan and with unruly long blonde hair “We have completely different taste but we’re super close, so this is perfect because she’s in bed by 9pm and gets up at 9am, when I’m coming to bed. It’s like having a room to yourself but you know each other is on board somewhere doing their thing.
“I said if I was ever going to do a cruise it would have to be European, because these ones are way younger feeling, and way more fun and why would I just want to see more of the States anyway?” she adds.
As for the original style of passenger, they’re still here — they just get up earlier and go to bed earlier, tolerating the DJ sets starting at midday by just leaving the ship for shore excursions, they say. “Or I just take my hearing aids out and it’s very peaceful,” one 70-something Brit tells me.
Other older passengers seem to like the young crowd and have been swapping knowledge on board. Ron, and older gent from the States can be found in the smoking area most mornings, cutting a new cigar and opening a book on Gaudi architecture, white socks pulled almost to his knees. He was fascinated to learn from a younger Scot smoking cigarettes that he can get more out of each cigar end by crumbling it into a pipe. “I need to get myself a pipe,” he drawls. “I never thought about it!” Another cigar-smoking regular, Barry, is having a great time teaching the young ones on board about pickle ball.
As for the most original cruise activity, it appears that swinging is still alive and well on board Virgin cruises in 2024. “Have you met Steve and Tammy yet?” is all anyone can ask each other on this particular cruise. Down the maze-like corridors of cabins, two decorations have been stuck to one particular door. Gone are the days of the upside-down pineapple signifying passenger’s penchant for extra-marital fun. These days large stickers of cocktails or flip-flops signify a welcome into another room. Everyone wants to know who Steve and Tammy are and given the new crowd at sea, and the younger generation’s interest in polyamory, maybe Steve and Tammy are much younger than we might think.
