This may be world's longest cruise, and it'll cost a boatload
Here’s a vacation set to cruise control.
Luxury liner Viking Cruises aims to set a world record for sailing around the world in 245 days – the longest continuous passenger excursion at sea.
The massive 930-passenger Viking Sun set sail from Greenwich cruise terminal in London on Aug. 31, embarking on its eight-month trip through 51 countries across six continents stopping in 111 ports and making overnight stops in 23 cities, Forbes reported. Trips that cruise around the world typically last up to 120 days.
Passengers will cruise through Scandinavia, the Caribbean and through South America. Viking Sun will continue on to the coast of Australia, and breeze through Asia before it returns to the Mediterranean and Europe next year.
Sailing the world comes with a steep price tag. The Ultimate World Cruise package onboard the Viking Sun costs $92,990 per passenger including meals, beer and wine with lunch and dinner, room service, free Wi-Fi, business class air travel and complimentary excursions at each port. Passengers must be 18 years or older.
It’s unclear how many people have booked a ticket onboard Viking Sun. The company made headlines in May for having engine trouble leaving its Viking Sky cruise ship adrift in Norway. A rescue team was called to airlift 479 people from the ship, which had more than 900 passengers and crew on board.
Viking did not immediately return a request for comment.
The 245-day journey could be unrealistic for most Americans, considering the average person only gets 15 days of paid vacation and holiday time off per year. And those who get it aren’t even using all of it. Around 54 percent of Americans used all of their vacation time, according to a report from Glassdoor from 2018.
Indeed, taking time off is a costly luxury for some employees who can’t afford to miss work since America is one of the only advanced economies in the world that does not offer workers paid vacation and paid holidays. A report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) found that 91 percent of the top 25 percent of high-earning workers get paid time off, compared to just 52 percent of the 25 percent of low-wage employees.
What’s more, one in four U.S. workers do not have paid vacation, according to CEPR. To compare, countries like France, Spain and the U.K. get nearly a month or more of mandatory paid vacation time off.
Taking time off, however, has proven to be better for business. When workers take vacation, they come back to work more productive, studies have shown.