“We’re getting two new ships, so with our fleet growing by a third, we have looked at where we want to put additional capacity,” said Jess Peterson, director of destination experience and itinerary planning at Windstar. “With the Star Seeker and our other plans, we are shifting capacity to the Pacific.”

After a debut in Miami and the Caribbean, the new Star Seeker spends summer 2026 in Alaska and then heads for Japan and Southeast Asia.

“We wanted to return to the popular destinations which we had left, and those were Alaska and Japan, the latter of which has been more popular than we expected. We released more itineraries of the same itinerary we do in Japan because we sold out … it has exceeded expectations.”

The plan is to keep the Star Seeker in the Pacific for the foreseeable future, Peterson said.

Other new options for 2026 include taking inspiration from the river operators and introducing a tulip season product out of the Netherlands.

Summer 2026 has the Wind Spirit homeporting in Rome but offering a different summer season cruise to the Aeolian Islands along with Corsica and Sardinia.

Southeast Asia is back for winter 2026-27, with the smaller ship size allowing Windstar to offer turns in less traditional ports, such as Hanoi and Phuket.

While airlift matters, Windstar doesn’t need as much as the big ship lines and is willing to think outside the box.

Regarding potential political pushback against cruise ships in Europe, Peterson said every situation was different.

“In many cases the rules only apply to the larger ships. Windstar and the other luxury lines come with only a couple hundred people. They want to eat ashore; they don’t care that lunch is included on the ship, and they often spend ashore when it comes to shopping.”

“We don’t want to be there if there is a bad experience,” he said. “Being smaller, we don’t need to bring in 40 guides from the big city. We can hire local guides. We aren’t buying the town out of fish; we can be that boutique hotel in town instead of a 4,000-guest Las Vegas-style resort that pulls up.”

Peterson said he expects Windstar’s deployment to be shifting so the ships remain in one part of the world as much as possible.

The basics remain the same. He is looking for authentic experiences and smaller ports, especially where the guests can walk off the ship into town. He also likes places where the company can take advantage of its aft marina.

“Another plus is ports that have a strategy around managing cruise tourism,” he said. “Even if it’s taking one ship a day, it should be done in a predictable way … ultimately that benefits everyone and makes the experience better.”

Excerpt from the Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine Spring 2025