Celebrity Equinox in Santorini, Greece
Tender ports are different in that they don’t have a suitable harbor big enough to accommodate modern cruise ships. A tender port might be a small island; Grand Cayman is an example, as is Santorini, where ships tie up to big concrete buoys in the middle of a volcanic caldera.
But not all tender ports are islands; sometimes, fairly big towns and cities are accessed by tender, including Villefranche in the south of France and Waterford in Ireland.
The difference when you arrive in one of these destinations is that you’ll be invited to the ship’s tender embarkation area. You’ll swipe your SeaPass card and embark the tender, which will ferry you ashore to a landing area that’s been set up by the crew. You’ll see the ship’s tenders buzzing back and forth all day.