Royal Caribbean Edges Out the Competition to Win Best App
Key Aspects:
The Royal Caribbean App has been chosen as the Best Cruise Line App of 2025.
The results were close, with Carnival’s HUB App right on its tail.
This is the first time Best Cruise Line App has been included as part of the Cruise Hive Awards.
For the first time in the history of the Cruise Hive Awards, readers were asked to vote on the best cruise line app.
Out of a competitive group of apps from the major cruise lines, it was ultimately the Royal Caribbean App that eked out the win.
The results were tight, with Royal Caribbean snagging the title of Best Cruise Line App in 2025 with a narrow lead of only 1.3 points.
It earned 21.6% of the vote, with Carnival Cruise Line’s HUB App close behind at 20.3%. Princess Cruises’ Princess Cruises App ranked third at 13.2%.
What Makes the Royal Caribbean App Special?
The Royal Caribbean App is really a one-stop shop to handle everything related to cruising, from booking and pre-planning to actually sailing.
While some tasks related to booking a cruise or pre-boarding need to be done online from a computer or via a phone call for other cruise lines, everything can be accomplished from this smartphone app.
Prior to embarkation day, guests can book new cruises, pre-book onboard packages, manage their loyalty program status, reserve shore excursions and shows, and book guest passes for private destinations, such as the newly opened Royal Beach Club Paradise Island in Nassau.
It also simplifies the pre-check-in and the subsequent boarding process at the cruise port by allowing much of the security check to be done in advance.
Guests are able to upload a security photo, important identifying documents (i.e., passports) in advance, which generates a mobile boarding pass. It also allows guests to pre-select an arrival time, which limits crowding in the cruise terminal.
Once onboard, guests can find any information they need from the app, which is known for being more intuitive and less glitchy than apps from other cruise lines.
From the app, guests can see all the activities happening onboard, make dining plans and view menus, explore deck plans, manage their onboard account, view operating hours, and more.
They can also chat with others in their travel party for free using the ship’s Wi-Fi without needing to purchase an internet package.
Other cruise lines, such as Carnival’s second-place HUB App, charge a fee of $5 per user to take advantage of in-app messaging.
How to Use the Royal Caribbean App
Royal Caribbean’s App is compatible with iPhones and Androids and can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. However, the App is not supported on tablets.
The app can be used in English, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese to be as broadly accessible as possible.
In order to fully take advantage of all that the app has to offer, guests will need to create a free account. This takes less than five minutes to do, and requires a name, email, birthday, and password of your choice.
Note that the app does have age restrictions. It is available to guests 13 years old and up in most countries.
Carnival HUB App Poses Competition
Carnival’s HUB App ranked very close behind the Royal Caribbean App in the voting, and is also well-liked for being a convenient all-in-one tool for managing cruises.
While new cruises can’t be booked directly from the HUB App like they can on the Royal Caribbean App, pretty much every other element before and during sailings can be managed from one’s smartphone.
However, it does have more of a reputation for being a bit glitchy or updating slowly, especially regarding onboard account balances and schedules.
Another Carnival-owned company ended up in third place. Princess Cruises’ app was next, and is very convenient for making advance bookings and seeing what’s happening onboard during sailings.
That said, this app can also be slow or glitchy, with the most commonly reported issues relating to problems logging in and not being able to access bookings or reservations that are visible online and in guests’ official travel summaries.
For context, the Cruise Hive Awards featured eight different categories, and participants were only able to vote once in each category. Additional results can be found here.
The public voting form was available from October 14, 2025, until December 19, 2025, and votes were screened to make sure they were from actual humans and not bots or spam.