Cruise Rivals, Starboard And Harding+, Lay Retail Blueprints For 2026

Cruise retail is accelerating into a new growth phase in 2026, and the sector’s biggest players—Starboard Group and Harding+—have each just set out their strategic priorities for the year. Both companies are leaning into experience, partnership, and data‑driven precision, but their framing and execution reveal distinct priorities.

Both companies were hit hard by the pandemic, when cruising ground to a halt. Harding restructured and shed key staff, while Starboard was partially sold by LVMH and then diversified into resort retail. Since the end of 2023, the retailer has been part of Global Travel Retail Holdings, a travel and tech-centric joint venture between Gissy Investments and LVMH.

The cruise business is now shipshape again and rapidly expanding—AAA Travel projects 21.7 million Americans will go on ocean cruises in 2026, dwarfing 2019 numbers. U.S.-based Starboard and U.K.-based Harding+ are therefore going full steam ahead with more emotional, evidence‑led, and collaborative retail strategies that are central to the guest journey.

Looking at Miami-based Starboard first, the mantra of partnership power, people focus, and experiential momentum was reinforced by president and CEO Lisa Bauer at its mid-January annual summit in Cancún. There were 200+ attendees including senior executives from Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, and Scenic Group, plus 17 brand partners.

Starboard doubles down on brand partnerships

Starboard’s 2026 strategy falls within the summit’s banner—Unleash the Potential—with messaging along the broad themes of celebration, education, and inspiration. At store level, these filter down to emphasizing culture, capability, and collaboration as the engines of the company’s next phase of growth.

Bauer has made brand partnerships a priority and they will be a defining feature of the retailer’s approach this year. Personalization, luxury, and experiential retail are all being deployed more intensively through activations with, for example, brand owners like Diageo and Bacardi in spirits, and fine jewelers like LeVian and pre-owned Rolex specialist Swiss Crown USA.

Starboard is encouraging cruise lines to view retail not as an ancillary revenue stream but as core to the onboard experience, in the same way restaurants and dining are. It means stepping away from a product-first approach and developing a more immersive, event‑driven model with tastings, showcases and networking events no longer seen as add‑ons, but becoming structural elements of Starboard’s retail proposition.

To do this, retail staff and ‘people culture’ are now also more prominent. Starboard’s 2026 strategy frames them not as simply sales support, but as essential levers who are critical to delivering more personalized, more luxurious, and more experiential retail across the company’s 90‑ship footprint.

Harding+ puts emotion, evidence and experimentation front and center

Where Starboard emphasizes partnership and culture, Harding+—which now styles itself as “the only global retailer 100% dedicated to cruise”—is articulating a more structural transformation—one that redefines cruise retail around three forces: emotion, evidence, and experimentation.

The ‘emotion’ pillar reflects a fundamental shift in how Harding+ designs and delivers retail. The cruise retailer says that 92% of guests intend to shop at sea, and 87% are influenced by storytelling. The result: Harding+ is building stores around mood, mindset and ‘the moment’ rather than category or brand.

This translates directly to the shop floor where around 25% of retail space on its 85+ships is now dedicated to experience‑led zones—tastings, masterclasses, capsule collections and workshops—designed to give passengers reasons to linger and moments that feel personal and memorable. The company is positioning experience not as theater, but as a measurable driver of revenue and loyalty.

Linzi Walker, chief commercial officer at Harding+, said: “Experience doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built into store architecture, event cadence, and how teams are supported to deliver service that feels effortless. An ROI [return on investment] of over 100% is not uncommon for the brands we partner with on experiences.” This is not entirely new for Harding+, but the scale is. Experience‑led retail is moving from a tactical play to a core commercial engine.

AI‑assisted analytics

The ‘evidence’ pillar is where Harding+ is perhaps pushing furthest beyond past practice. AI‑assisted analytics now model demand, voyage‑by‑voyage. This is reshaping assortments, replenishment, staffing, and storytelling in real time.

The company claims that its upgraded supply chain platform now consistently delivers 90%+ stock availability—an operational feat in a channel defined by complex itineraries and limited storage. The introduction of dynamic shelf pricing in 2026 marks another significant evolution. It enables live responsiveness to the guest mix, seasonality and behavioral cues, bringing a level of agility rarely seen in cruise retail.

The third pillar of ‘experimentation’ positions cruise ships as live innovation platforms. Harding+ introduced 2,000 new‑to‑sea products last year and with a 47% impulse purchase rate, the retailer argues that the cruise channel offers a uniquely interactive environment for testing, learning and iterating. This enables brands to trial concepts before wider rollouts.

One direction of travel

While Starboard and Harding+ articulate their strategies differently, they are responding to the same macro forces: guests seeking richer experiences, cruise lines demanding stronger commercial results, and brands looking for deeper engagement with customers.

Starboard’s 2026 strategy leans into partnership, culture and experiential momentum, while Harding+ is building a more systematized retail model around emotion, data, and innovation. Both, however, reflect a sector that is moving beyond transactional retail to something more immersive, more intelligent and more interactive.