In the year 2001, a total of 7.2 million passengers took a cruise vacation. The global cruise industry has been growing at 9% per year for the last decade. Assume that this growth rate continues.

How many cruise passengers (in millions) are predicted in the year 2002?

To find the number of passengers for the next year (2002), take the prior value (7.2 million) and multiply it by 1.09. This will give the predicted value for 2002. In this case, it would be (7,200,000 * 1.09 = 7.848 million). This would show that there is a predicted rise of 0.648 million passengers for the year 2002.