http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21606292-right-bare-arms-legs-and-other-body-parts-nudists-cruises
“We’re busier than a coot,” says Donna Daniels of Castaways Travel, which arranges nudist cruises and other vacations. Except for a dip in business in 2008, the 30-year-old company has been growing steadily, and surged 20% last year. Nude travel is “a tremendous niche”, says Nancy Tiemann of Bare Necessities, another nude-cruise firm. Its first cruise in 1990 involved 36 passengers on a boat in the Bahamas. Last year it chartered a ship big enough to carry 3,000 on the Caribbean.
One reason for the rise in luxury nudist travel is that customers are ageing. Nudists tend to be older, richer and whiter (OK, pinker) than the national average, and they travel mostly in romantic pairs, says Bob Morton of the Naturist Action Committee, an advocacy group. Many are not full-time naturists but think a clothing-optional holiday sounds fun: some 18% of American leisure travellers say they are game for it, according to a 2014 survey by MMGY Global, a marketing firm.
There is still plenty of demand for public nudist beaches. Haulover Beach in Miami, the country’s largest, lures more than 1.3m visitors each year, many of them “cottontails” (white-bummed novices), says Shirley Mason, the beach’s founder. They spend over $1 billion a year, according to Miami’s convention and visitors bureau. Ms Mason is now raising capital to create three new clothing-optional resorts near the beach.
But there are few public beaches like Haulover left. This is the challenge facing the nudist travel industry: few people know they want to do it until they try it, perhaps by stumbling on an inviting beach of cottontails. Or as Mr Morton says of the joys of skinny-dipping: “I can’t explain it if you haven’t experienced it, and if you have I don’t need to.”