This research addresses two main issues; the first, is the anomaly that the Caribbean accounts for over fifty percent of the world s market share of cruise ship passenger deployment, but generates less than five percent of the industry s revenue, while imposing significant financial and environmental costs on a number of Caribbean nations. The central finding is that the Caribbean cruise industry operates almost entirely for the benefit of the cruise lines. The industry is vertically integrated and has a high level of value-capture among the stakeholder chain.