We sat down with Anne Mari Gullikstad and Fabiana Vale Dornelas from YSA Design to discuss the evolution of cruise dining trends. They shared their valuable design insights with us, including the impact of the change in demographics of cruise guests, the rise in speciality restaurants and market dining and how to design flexible spaces that can transform between lunch and dinner.
Hello! Please introduce yourselves to our readers.

Anne Mari: I am Anne Mari Gullikstad, Owner and CEO of YSA Design. I’ve been part of this business since the early 1990s, so I’ve been here for a very long time! I’m an interior architect by education and I’m still involved in our projects.

Fabiana: My name is Fabiana Vale Dornelas. I’m Senior Interior Architect and Head of Sustainability & Implementation. I’ve been with YSA Design for 20 years.
Let’s discuss cruise dining trends. Do you agree that cruise dining has evolved in recent years?
Anne Mari: Because I’ve been in the business for so long, I can see that there have been big changes since the 90s and early 2000’s. It used to be very common for all ships to have big restaurants where guests were assigned a dining schedule. Things started to change before the pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated these trends. Now, cruise lines will feature more individual restaurants and offer more dining flexibility. They offer more and smaller specialty restaurants, which gives guests much more to choose from.
Fabiana: I think that the cruise dining experience is evolving in part because of the changing demographics of the guests. Cruise lines are now catering for families and young couples. There are young people traveling on cruise ships and they have different expectations for dining.
Anne Mari: Another big trend is for cruise lines to feature specialty restaurants run by a famous chef. These might be fish restaurants, steak restaurants, perhaps a Japanese restaurant, but the common thread is that they are led by a celebrity chef. This enhances their branding and gives them an edge over their competitors.
Fabiana: Cruise lines have also adapted to feature dining options that mimic landside trends, like food halls or a promenade. Dining has become like an experience in itself. The variety of speciality restaurants that Anne-Mari mentioned is probably a trend among the older and more established cruise guests. But this informal dining, such as food courts or market-style dining, is driven by the younger generation of cruisers.
Do you have an example of a cruise dining space that you’ve worked on that introduced some of these new concepts and the impact that cruise dining trends had on the design?
Anne Mari: We created a dining space a few years ago for MSC Seaside and Seaview. It was a cluster of specialty restaurants. When you entered you were met with the bar, then you could move to the wine tasting area. Then, you walked through and encountered the specialty restaurants, including Roy Yamaguche’s restaurant.
It is important to have a good collaboration with the chef when we design these specialty restaurants. Their branding must be incorporated in the space’s design philosophy. Another example of this is our work on the chocolate shop on the MSC Meraviglia. We worked very closely with pastry chef Jean-Philippe Maury, who was very involved with the design details. Working with these chefs means you have more stakeholders in the design. It’s one thing to agree the layout and design concepts with the owners but now you have a third person who has a lot of influence on the design and the look and the feel.


When you create these market-style dining spaces, are you looking to create a feeling of unity within the design?
Fabiana: I feel that when cruise lines brief these spaces they want to mimic the experience you would have if you were on land. They want the guests to feel as though they are walking down the street, noticing a restaurant here, an eaterie there. The world is more globalized too. So, I feel the design fantasy is one of a guest walking down a street and discovering different worlds in one space. They have a very different look and feel to one another. And that, I think, intrigues the younger guests.
How much thought do you have to give to the operations side of a restaurant during the design process?
Anne Mari: Take a food court. On some cruise lines these will feature areas where the guest picks up the food and carries it to their table. Previously this was a buffet style, now it’s much more common that the guest will be served over the counter. Others will feature open kitchens and serving staff who bring the food to the guests’ tables. It’s important for us to understand how the cruise line will plan that service, because if they are utilising servers then we will need to account for big waiter stations within the space. But, if they intend for guests to help themselves then we may need fewer waiter stations, but create larger walkways to accommodate the increase in the number of people walking the space.
Fabiana: Another important aspect is the implementation of technology. I think cruise lines want to meet younger guests’ expectations. This might include booking their table in advance, digital menus and ordering food from their table, via their phone. Everything is much more modernised in this way. We must also consider hybrid spaces, which require more flexibility. We need to be able to design spaces that get a lot of use during the day but then offer the feel of an exclusive dining experience at night.
How would you approach that? How does that impact what design decisions you guys are making?
Anne Mari: We designed La Veranda for Regent Seven Seas. It was a typical lunch place during the day and a beautiful evening restaurant at night. There, they used an open kitchen function during the day and guests could serve themselves. But, we included beautifully decorated sliding doors which closed the kitchen off at night. Guests wouldn’t have seen an open kitchen at all because the sliding doors were decorated as if they were the real walls. And then, of course, you dress up with the white tablecloths and nice cutlery, and change the ambience of the light.
Fabiana: If you, for instance, want to be able to relocate the tables then you don’t want to have a big chandelier in that specific space. Instead, you would opt for lighting that is more adaptable to the changing table layouts. We need to take how they’re going to use this space into consideration as it absolutely affects the design process.
Want more of this?
Check out the Cruise Ship Interiors (CSI) Design Expo Europe blog for more design insights and the latest industry updates. CSI Design Expo Europe is a specialised conference and exhibition catered exclusively to the European cruise interior design industry, with a unique focus on Europe’s luxury ocean, river, and expedition cruising. The next event will be taking place on 3 – 4 December 2025 at Hamburg Messe & Congress.