No mainstream cruise fare is all-inclusive; the term belongs to a small group of luxury and expedition lines. Regent Seven Seas states on its own site that unlimited shore excursions are included in all suites alongside beverages, gratuities and Wi-Fi, which is the widest bundle in the market. Explora Journeys includes unlimited beverages, all nine culinary venues, high-speed Wi-Fi and onboard gratuities in its Journey Fare. Silversea restructured its fares on 11 September 2025 into All-Inclusive Plus, All-Inclusive and Last Minute, with the Plus fare adding a shore-excursion credit. The useful test is not whether a line calls itself all-inclusive but which of five things — drinks, gratuities, Wi-Fi, specialty dining and shore excursions — the fare actually covers.
“All-inclusive” is a marketing word, not a category, and on most of the cruise market it means almost nothing. No mainstream fare is all-inclusive. The handful of lines where the phrase is honest are at the luxury and expedition end, they cost several times as much per night, and even they draw a boundary — the useful question is never whether a line calls itself all-inclusive but which five things the fare actually covers.
The five-item test
Every argument about what is or is not all-inclusive comes down to the same five line items. Run any fare against them and the marketing stops mattering:
Drinks. The one everybody checks first, and the one most often bundled. A line including drinks is not thereby all-inclusive — it has done the easy one.
Gratuities. Either in the fare or added daily to your shipboard account. This is where the language gets slipperiest, because a line can include gratuities on drinks while still charging a daily service charge on the fare. Those are two different things and both get called “gratuities included”.
Wi-Fi. Increasingly bundled, often at a throttled tier with a faster one sold on top.
Specialty dining. Almost always partially included at best. Even the genuinely all-inclusive lines keep one signature restaurant outside the fare.
Shore excursions. The big one, and the one nearly everybody assumes and nearly nobody gets. Excursions are the largest variable cost on a typical cruise. A fare that includes them is doing something structurally different from a fare that includes drinks.
The lines where the phrase is honest
Regent Seven Seas bundles the most, and it is the excursions that make the difference. Regent states on its own site that unlimited shore excursions are included in all suites, alongside beverages, gratuities and Wi-Fi. That is the widest bundle in the market, and it is the only one that removes the cost line most people fail to budget for. Excursions that need a smaller group or a specialist guide sit in a separate Regent Choice tier at a supplementary charge, so “unlimited” has an edge to it — but the edge is narrow and it is published.
Explora Journeys includes the ship and stops there. Its Journey Fare covers all nine culinary venues, unlimited beverages including wines, champagne and premium spirits, high-speed Wi-Fi throughout the ship, the spa thermal area, onboard gratuities and port shuttles. Shore excursions are not included, which is the single most important sentence for anyone comparing it with Regent.
Silversea restructured in September 2025, and most published guides have not caught up. On 11 September 2025 it replaced the old Door-to-Door and Port-to-Port fares with All-Inclusive Plus, All-Inclusive and Last Minute. The Plus fare adds a shore excursion credit on classic voyages — a credit, note, not unlimited access — and on expedition voyages includes all landings. If a guide you are reading still describes Silversea’s fares as door-to-door, it is describing a system that no longer exists.
What none of them include. Every line here keeps a reserve list of premium wines and spirits outside the fare, and at least one signature restaurant. On Explora, as of August 2026, its own inclusions page puts the Anthology restaurant outside the fare, charged at €165 per person, with an optional wine pairing charged at €70. Reserve-list wines and spirits sit outside the fare too, at roughly €15 to €20 a glass as of August 2026. Those first two are exact published per-item fees rather than fares, which is why they can be quoted at all — the nightly fare itself varies far too much by voyage, suite category and season for any figure to be useful, and any page quoting you one should be treated with suspicion.
Why the mainstream lines are not on that list
Because a mainstream cruise fare is a low headline price with a long tail of extras, and that is a deliberate commercial model rather than an oversight. It is also why comparing a cheap seven-night mainstream fare with a luxury line’s is meaningless until you have added the drinks package, the service charge, the Wi-Fi and four excursions to the first one. Do that arithmetic honestly and the gap narrows a good deal — not to nothing, but to far less than the headline numbers suggest.
If that is the comparison you are actually making, this is the wrong page and we have written the right one: what is included on a cruise and what is not works through the mainstream fare line by line, and how to avoid surprise costs on a cruise covers the charges that catch people out. On drinks specifically, our drink packages guide gives you the break-even method rather than a rate that will be wrong by next season.
Some mainstream lines do bundle more than others — MSC’s newest hardware, MSC World America among it, sells packages that include the gratuities on the drinks while a separate daily service charge still lands on your account. That is exactly the ambiguity the five-item test exists to catch.
So is it worth the premium
It is worth it when your onboard spending would be high anyway. A couple who drink, take two excursions per port, want fast Wi-Fi and eat in the specialty restaurants is buying most of an all-inclusive fare on a mainstream ship at retail, one item at a time, with the bill arriving at the end.
It is not worth it when you are a light spender, when the itinerary is the point and you would rather explore ports independently, or when you are cruising for the first time and do not yet know which of those you are. A first cruise is a bad place to spend the luxury premium, because you are paying for inclusions you cannot yet value.
And a genuinely all-inclusive cruise is a different holiday, not an upgraded one — smaller ships, older passengers, longer itineraries, no waterslides. If what you want is a resort that moves, the premium buys you the opposite of that. Our cruise versus all-inclusive resort comparison is the right read if you are weighing a ship against a land resort rather than one fare against another.
Common questions
Are cruises all-inclusive?
Mainstream cruise fares are not. They cover the cabin, most dining venues, entertainment and non-alcoholic basics; drinks, gratuities, Wi-Fi, specialty dining and shore excursions are charged separately. Genuinely all-inclusive fares exist only at the luxury and expedition end of the market.
Which cruise line is the most all-inclusive?
Regent Seven Seas bundles the most, because it is the only line that includes unlimited shore excursions in every suite alongside drinks, gratuities and Wi-Fi. Shore excursions are the single largest variable cost on most cruises, which is what makes that inclusion decisive.
Is an all-inclusive cruise cheaper?
Not per night, and that is the wrong comparison. An all-inclusive fare has a much higher sticker price and a near-zero onboard bill; a mainstream fare has a low sticker price and an onboard bill that is genuinely hard to predict. Compare the total, not the headline.
Do all-inclusive cruises include shore excursions?
Rarely, and this is the inclusion most often assumed and least often granted. Regent includes unlimited excursions; Silversea’s All-Inclusive Plus fare gives a credit rather than unlimited access; most other lines that call themselves all-inclusive exclude excursions entirely.
Does all-inclusive mean everything is free?
No. Every all-inclusive line keeps a reserve list of premium wines and spirits, and at least one signature restaurant, outside the fare. The bundle is wide, not total, and the exclusions are published on each line’s own inclusions page.
Ignore the badge and run the five-item test. Drinks, gratuities, Wi-Fi, specialty dining, shore excursions — count how many the fare covers and you will know more than any roundup will tell you, because the roundups rank lines and the answer depends on how you personally spend.
That comparison is fiddly and it is most of what we do. Tell us how you actually holiday — what you drink, whether you book excursions, whether you would use the Wi-Fi — and we will price the same trip both ways and show you the total rather than the headline. You can browse the field on our cruise lines page, or just ask us. If you want a starting point, Virgin Voyages and Celebrity are the two mainstream lines that come closest to genuinely all-inclusive.