Holidays on the high seas are increasingly back in fashion, with the number of cruise ship passengers in Fremantle at its highest point for more than 40 years.
More than 100,000 passengers have passed through the Fremantle Passenger Terminal during the 2014-15 cruising season.
The last time that many holiday-goers went through the port city on cruise ships was back in 1972-73.
The current numbers are a far cry from the number of passengers that jumped on a ship back in the 2006-07 season when only 9498 people passed through the port.
Trade development manager Thor Elliott said with two ships still to visit Fremantle before the end of the financial year, the passenger numbers were expected to rise.
"We estimate the final total will be about 117,000 passengers from 43 ship visits," he said.
"With 56 ship visits scheduled for next year, the figures can only improve."
And it appears Australians as a whole can't get enough of cruising, with the recent figures released by Cruise Weekly this week showing that more than a million people took to the water last year.
Cruise Lines International Association Australasia chairman Gavin Smith said Australians' obsession with cruising was only matched by France.
"The expansion of our industry in recent years means there's now a huge range of ships and itineraries on offer across the globe and I think Australians, who are inveterate travellers, are responding by increasingly factoring a cruise into their holiday plans."
"Five years ago, the industry thought that it might be possible to achieve one million passengers a year by 2020 – to reach that number in 2014 is an amazing result and shows the true passion Australians have for cruise holidays.
CruiseWorld manager Khush Santoke said people were streaming through their Perth doors looking to book a cruise.
"People with young families [through] to grandparents are going on cruises," she told Fairfax Media.
"People don't want to fly overseas much and with a cruise you just unpack and pack just once.
"It's really taken off over the last years – we are seeing cruise numbers go up every year.
Ms Santoke said there was a cruise for just about everyone.
"It's about getting people on the right ship, otherwise they won't come back," she said.
"Australians still want to travel to Europe, but a lot of people are going to places like China and Japan."
Tourism WA chief executive Stephanie Buckland said cruise shipping contributed more than $116 million to the state's economy, with a warm Mediterranean climate in the south and tropical weather to the north supporting year-round business.
Ms Buckland said Tourism WA had worked closely with the Cruise WA Committee.
"And this work is starting to come to fruition," she said.
"For example in 2012-13, Fremantle Ports welcomed 17 cruise ships with 49,000 passengers. In 2014-15, Fremantle will attract 43 ships with more than 110,000 passengers and the forecast for 2015-16 is 54 ships and 150,000 passengers."
