How the number is made

A reading, not a ranking. The scores behind it are set by an advisor at Expeditioner Travel, where we have sailed five of the 21 lines in CruiseLens — Azamara, Celebrity, Crystal, Regent and Silversea — and researched the rest. They are judgement rather than measurement: held to a written rubric, audited against the operators' own published specifications, and identical for every visitor.

The calculation

Twenty-three questions produce, for each of the twenty-eight matching characteristics they read, a target (1–10) and a base weight (0–3). The final question multiplies by 1.5 the weight of each characteristic behind the three priorities you choose, so an effective weight can exceed 3. Outdoor living sits behind two of the nine priorities, so choosing both multiplies it twice. The value-orientation question sets a target on value alone.

match = 1 − ( Σ w·p ) ÷ ( 9 · Σ w ) In words: the match is one minus the sum of each characteristic’s weight times its penalty, divided by nine times the sum of the weights, nine being the largest possible penalty.

The penalty p depends on the characteristic: two-sided (either direction is a mismatch), a floor (exceeding your target costs nothing), or a ceiling. Where a ship has no score, the characteristic leaves both sums — a gap lowers confidence rather than silently lowering the score.

Raw scores compress badly: everything decent lands close together, so a mediocre fit still reads as "quite good". The percentages shown are therefore rescaled against fixed anchors set from this fleet before display, and the band is the honest number.

What is not counted

Only the 28 matching characteristics your answers read enter the percentage. The 5 quality characteristics — how consistently the service is delivered, how well the kitchen executes — are deliberately kept out of it, because every traveller wants a ten on those and including them would simply drag every result toward the most expensive ship. They are used for one thing only: breaking ties between ships within three points of each other. 30 of 30 entries carry quality scores; the composite is never shown as a number, only the relative band. The 4 derived characteristics (expedition capability, crew intensity, overnight frequency, marina) are calculated from published specifications rather than judged. They can exclude a ship outright but never enter the percentage either.

Ruling ships out

Some things are facts rather than preferences to be traded off, so they exclude a ship rather than deducting from it. There are six:

Excluded ships are never quietly dropped: the reading says how many were ruled out and why, and the full reading we send names them. If you choose the remote-destinations answer, CruiseLens keeps only ships with the expedition capability that kind of travel needs; it does not match individual published itineraries. Two rules bend rather than empty the reading. If the age rule would leave you fewer than five ships, the closer ones are kept and ranked below the rest. If you pick the Galápagos or the remote destinations, and your dress-code answer would rule out every ship suited to them, those ships stay in with the mismatch counted against them: none of them has dressy evenings. The result says so either way. Evidence quality is recorded per ship and travels with the reading, but it does not exclude anything.

How long the questionnaire is, and why

The reading asks 23 questions, all of them of everyone — about four minutes. Visitors told us 28 was too long, so in September 2026 we removed the 5 that changed the result least, measured rather than guessed. Across 1,800 simulated visitors the shorter reading names the same first ship as the old 28-question one about 84% of the time, and a ship within three points of it — which the reading treats as an equally good fit — about 96% of the time. Every one of the 30 ships can still come first. The ships are still scored on the characteristics those questions used to read — dining freedom, time ashore, wellness, fitness and casino — but they no longer enter the match; your advisor covers them in conversation.

The data

1,140 specification fields across 30 ship entries, each with its source and the date it was checked. All but four come from the operators’ own pages and brochures; the others from CruiseMapper (an independent ship database), MedCruise (the Mediterranean cruise ports association) and Sunstone Ships (owner of the Greg Mortimer).

A blank is a documented gap, never an imputed value. Where an operator does not publish a number, this tool says so rather than estimating it.

The characteristics

Each is scored 1–10 for every ship. The two ends of each scale:

Scored for every ship but not read from the questionnaire: dining freedom, time ashore, wellness, fitness and casino.

How we’re paid

Expeditioner Travel earns commission from the cruise line on bookings we make, including on every ship in this tool. The scoring runs on published characteristics and is identical for every visitor — it does not know what any line pays, and no line pays for placement. Where a recommendation and our commission point in different directions, we will tell you.

What leaves your browser

Your answers are sent to our own server to be scored and are not stored there. The answer weights and the exclusion rules never leave that server, and the full table of ship scores is not published: our comparison pages quote only the scores that set two ships apart, our guide to the lines names only the top ship group for each choice, without scores, and our study of the fleet only ranges, averages and the gaps between ships. What comes back is the reading you see: one ship named in full — with its characteristic profile plotted against yours — up to four more as bands, and the reasons any others were ruled out.