River cruise characteristics from a destination management perspective

River cruises are an under-researched topic in tourism literature despite many destinations and tourism stakeholders being affected by their impacts. To fill this gap, generalizable peculiarities of European river cruises were identified by contrasting the findings and experiences of conducting an applied study on river cruise impacts in Vienna with published literature on ocean cruises. These peculiarities are discussed from the perspective of destination management and onshore tourism stakeholders in order to offer broad recommendations and avenues for future research.