Water Transportation of Passengers, NEC

This industry is comprised of a number of different operations. Among them, airboats, or swamp buggies, provide transportation primarily for sightseers in swamps and marshy areas; excursion and sightseeing boats offer passenger tours and inland water cruises; and canal boats give passengers the opportunity to explore historic canals. The Mississippi, Ohio, and Columbia Rivers are main waterways for river cruises. The Missouri River emerged as a popular tour destination during the 2004-2006 bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition and continues to feature tour and hotel barge excursions.

According to 2009 statistics, there were 1,908 establishments engaged in this industry in the late 2000s and nearly 15,000 employees who earned approximately $347 million in wages. The industry generated more than $1.57 billion in revenue that year.

While some establishments in the industry base their tourist appeal on remoteness from civilization, others focus on historical connections between industry and natural or man-made waterways. Disused canals offer great natural beauty and also serve as a reminder of key moments in the nation's past, including the brief and yet crucial role of canals in opening up the West and fostering the growth of the U.S. economy, as well as a time when the forces of industrialization and the natural world co-existed on a more equal footing. One example was the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, connecting Cumberland, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., which became a national historical park area.

River tours often provide excellent introductions to the history and architecture of major urban centers. Other activities in the industry include dinner yacht cruises, steamboat rides, riverboat gaming operations, and trips aboard U.S. Postal Service boats. Shipwreck sites have become "bottomland preserves," providing additional sources of revenue for local businesses offering water transportation services to tourists, marine biologists, and scuba enthusiasts.

Industry leaders include San Francisco-based Blue & Gold Fleet, which operates ferry and water excursion services in the Bay Area; American West Steamboat Company, of Seattle, which features a paddle-wheel cruiser on the Columbia-Snake River system; America Cruise Lines, of Guilford, Connecticut, which offers inland cruises of Florida rivers and historic tours of the Antebellum South; Delta Queen Steamboat Co., a subsidiary of the prominent leisure group Delaware North Corporation that is headquartered on the Mississippi River in New Orleans and operates cruises on the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, and Kanawha Rivers; and RiverBarge Excursion Lines of New Orleans, whose river excursion vehicles include two three-deck hotel barges.