On a balmy day along the Embarcadero in October 2010, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom sprung toward a microphone, gazed up toward the passengers idling on a Princess Cruises ship berthed at Pier 27 and proceeded to berate them. “Welcome to San Francisco!” he belted to the sky. “Why aren’t you out shopping?”
Newsom and a group of speakers were celebrating Pier 27 becoming the first California port to provide shoreside electrical power to cruise ships. But this was not just an occasion to boast about the power of clean energy. The maritime hub was undergoing a $100 million redesign that was central to the city’s plan for capitalizing on the cruise industry.
It would take another four years for the new James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27 to fully come online, but the stage was set. Now, as 2025 concludes, the proverbial cruise ship has come in — and the industry is thriving in San Francisco.
After welcoming its last ship of the year on Friday, the Port of San Francisco saw more than 365,000 passengers visit across 90 ships. The year also marked the 3 millionth cruise passenger to pass through Pier 27 since the terminal’s debut in 2014. Every cruise ship is a floating purse waiting to spill into San Francisco’s economy; the city estimates that each cruise generates about $500,000 in economic activity per visit.
That day in 2010 on the Embarcadero helped propel the city on its path to becoming a new powerhouse for cruises on the West Coast. Cruise ship passenger numbers tripled between 2001 and 2006 but stalled during the recession. Around that time, an advisory panel for the Port, formed at the behest of Newsom, recommended updating Pier 27 for the new millennium. The modern terminal would supersede Pier 35, the previous cruise dock that was more than 100 years old.
Newsom displayed his signature, slicked-back charisma as he celebrated “these big ships coming into San Francisco” to directly support city tourism.
It was a timely investment. Unlike some of its counterparts in city tourism set back by the pandemic, the Port managed to excel. The cruise industry was expanding along the Embarcadero while investors abandoned the city’s largest hotel and the Moscone Center lost conferences.
Since ships returned from an industrywide hiatus in 2021, both vessels and passenger volumes have never been higher on the city’s shoreline. The ports peaked in 2023, when 99 ships brought in over 375,000 passengers. Business has sustained and continues to surpass the 280,000 average passengers counted in the years prior to the pandemic.
The Port posted a record-high $133 million in revenue this year, and cruises played a big role. During a Port commission meeting in early December, Andre Coleman, the deputy director of maritime, boasted that they had “recently experienced the highest annual cruise volumes in the Port’s history. That’s after a global pandemic that brought our passenger count down to zero for 18 months.”
Lately, the rest of the local tourism industry is catching up to the Port as San Francisco continues to make headway in its recovery after a downward trajectory. The city remains a top-five hotel market in the country for revenue per available room, and conferences hosted at the Moscone Center are easier to sell than before. Like the Port, San Francisco International Airport is smashing pre-pandemic traveler records and the rest of the country is gradually softening its negative perception.
“San Francisco is a destination city,” Coleman told SFGATE, and large cruise lines see the opportunity. Ruby Princess, the city’s hometown cruise ship for over 50 years, calls dozens of trips to Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico per year. In 2022, the Port welcomed Carnival Cruises for the first time, adding another 20 or more voyages. The company is doubling down in 2026, deploying the larger Carnival Luminosa vessel and making San Francisco the ship’s home port.
Coleman credits now-Gov. Newsom’s “foresight” for investing in the shoreline. He said that Pier 35 was one of the Port’s oldest structures, and incapable of keeping up as cruise ships grew in size and sped up their turnovers. Pier 35 continues to berth a few ships a year, but most activity is now at its successor. After a decade of docking cruise ships, the Pier 27 terminal has been warmly received by the cruise community, with some travelers noting its easy access.
The Port recognizes that there is further potential for cruise docking in San Francisco and, just like 20 years ago, Coleman said it’s performing a market analysis to determine if any of its other facilities could accommodate the industry.
“We hope to conclude the analysis in Q2 of 2026,” he said. “From there, we’ll evaluate our opportunities.”
Read more on San Francisco Gate
