From the Great Lakes State to the Great Wide Ocean, Jason Beukema has done the unimaginable: His Groove Cruise this month will unleash seaborne sets by 100-plus DJs for thousands on board.

Groove Cruise: The biggest floating music festival with top-shelf entertainers. (Courtesy Photo)
This is the story of how one West Michigan entrepreneur created the world’s largest floating electronic music festival — not to mention one of the most revered cruise experiences at sea.
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And to think this visionary had his beginnings in the blue-collar Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming.
To put things in perspective: Electronic music’s “Fab Five” of U.S. festivals (by square acreage and crowd density) would likely include Burning Man (Nevada), Coachella (Indio, Calif.), Electric Daisy Carnival (Las Vegas/Orlando), Electric Forest (Michigan) and Ultra (Miami).
However, there’s one standalone festival at sea that has to be seen to be believed: The Groove Cruise, which is much, much more than just an anomalous party on a large cruise ship.
And amid a universe of corporate festival titans, this festival had remarkably humble beginnings.

Jason Beukema (Courtesy Photo)
Groove Cruise CEO and founder Jason Beukema grew up outside Grand Rapids in Wyoming, which is as working-class middle America as it gets, so much so that Wyoming had not only one General Motors plant, but two.
Jason attended Rogers High School, where he lived a fairly normal life as a teenager, playing golf, basketball and baseball. His mother, Karen, worked in the school offices, and his dad, John, was a high school math teacher.
After graduating in the late ’90s, Beukema attended Central Michigan University, initially studying pre-med, but later graduated with a degree in entrepreneurship.
While his initial post-college business endeavor didn’t go as planned, the lessons he learned in that short time proved more valuable than any college curriculum.
Shortly thereafter, he joined corporate America as a salesperson for an Atlanta-based multi-national corporation, and sold timeshares for Radisson Vacations as a side hustle to help pay off some prior debt.
During this time period, he asked his boss if he could attend a two-week course at the International Tour Management Institute in northern California, and, ironically, found himself unemployed upon his return.
Disillusioned with this first foray into corporate America, two things happened that would help chart his destiny: Tour companies hired Jason to host motor coach tours throughout North America, where he was able to incubate his passion for travel and meeting new people, and he hired Vern Harnish — coach for the Franklin Covey leadership coaching and training company — who taught Beukema Mark Twain’s age-old paradigm — “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
ORGANIZING HIS FIRST ELECTRONIC MUSIC CRUISE AND THE CHALLENGES OF COVID
That led to organizing his first music-centric cruise in 2004, after a group of friends asked him to put together the electronic music voyage for 125 attendees.
(It should be noted that after the United States experienced what is widely regarded as “the summer of love” in 1998-99, electronic music almost evaporated altogether in the following years as hip hop rose to the top. So it’s not like Beukema “rode the wave”’ with his new concept.)
“I wasn’t even really into electronic music all that much,” Beukema told Local Spins during a Zoom session where his parents joined in as well. “But it struck me as a unique opportunity, so I dove in head first.”
Setting reasonable goals of doubling attendance every year, the Groove Cruise team found itself in a unique position by 2011, launching their first full ship charter on Norwegian Cruise Lines.

The 2024 Cruise (Courtesy Photo/Divisuals)
“Making that decision was the scariest day of my life,” Beukema stated.
Over the course of the next decade, The Groove Cruise continued to grow, changing cruise lines, moving to larger ships, and booking more famous DJs.
It continued to sell out yearly and yet somehow remained as organic as it was in the beginning, perhaps attributed to the Midwest work ethic and ethos — typified in Whet Travel’s language by calling Groove Cruise attendees “Captains” instead of guests, and Jason’s title being a play on the term CEO, where he humbly serves as the Chief Excitement Officer.
But the pandemic proved to be a monumental challenge.
“When the world shut down in 2020 due to COVID, it was impossible to know whether it was going to last two weeks, two months or two years,” the choked-up founder stated. “I leaned on one of my mentors, who advised me that I needed to cut the Groove Cruise staff almost immediately. Some of the hardest virtual meetings and phone calls I’ve ever had to make took place not long thereafter. These people weren’t just employees; they were literally the backbone of what we built over 15-plus years and, as such, my family.”
A proverbial second shoe dropped in the passing of DJ Greg Bauer in November of 2021.
“In the early days when I didn’t have the money for proper production, Greg was driving from Chicago to Miami with a truck loaded with all of the gear he could come up with,” said a tearful Beukema. “There is a long list of people that Groove Cruise would not exist without, and Greg was at the top of that list.”
THE 2024 SELLOUT AND AN EVEN BIGGER CRUISE FOR 2025
“In the early days, all of the DJs were bringing gear to help support the effort because they believed in Jason’s vision,” noted West Michigan native and DJ Shannon Williams.
“It was almost like a potluck of sorts where one DJ would bring one piece of gear, and another DJ would bring a complementary piece of gear.”
But fast forward to January 2024, and the Groove Cruise celebrated its 20th anniversary aboard the Norwegian Encore. The cruise was a sellout with 4,000-plus attendees and top-shelf headliners such as Diplo, John Summit and Tiësto.

Setting Sail Again This Week: Groove Cruise (Courtesy Photo)
Not long thereafter, the 2025 sailing of Groove Cruise sold out the second-largest cruise ship classification in the world, Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas.
Starting Thursday (Jan. 23), upwards of 7,000 returning Captains and newcomers alike will embark from Miami on an unforgettable journey featuring 96 hours of continuous music from over 100 DJs, performing on 13 stages on the ship plus two on an island.
Electronic music stars Eric Prydz, James Hype, Meduza, Nicole Moudaber, Seven Lions, the U.K.’s Cristoph and dozens more will light up the cruise. (Scroll down for full lineup and Groove Cruise poster.)
“You’ve got to tip your hat to Jason and the team. What they’ve achieved with the Groove Cruise brand, turning it into the biggest floating music festival, is mighty impressive. I see the lineups year after year, and they’re always top tier,” Cristoph told Local Spins.
“As an event, it’s become one of those must-play parties, and you see heaps of love online for Groove Cruise from both fans and artists. So yeah, I’m really excited to get on board.”
The aforementioned Williams, a long-time Groove Cruise resident DJ, will perform several sets on the ship while closing out the island stage in support of his recent chart-topping house anthem: “Dance For Me.”

Shannon Williams (Courtesy Photo)
Beukema also revels in his role as an ordained minister, with upwards of eight couples getting married during Groove Cruise 2025.
Perhaps even more notable is a sister effort to the parent company Whet Travel. The Whet Foundation is a Florida-based 501c3 that offers grass-roots disaster relief for those experiencing hardships, mental health programming throughout the year, and ocean conservation efforts with 4Ocean.
And if you see a 70-something couple wandering around the ship, that would be Karen and John Beukema, Jason’s parents, aka “Mama and Papa Groove.”
For the legions of fans using the hashtag #GCFam on social media, this isn’t some sort of clever marketing ploy: It’s clearly a way of life, intentionally designed to touch as many people as possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Todd Ernst has been an electronic music DJ and promoter for 30-plus years and is half of the DJ duo DiscoBrunch. While his days are spent as the owner of an indie real estate brokerage, he also owns EXSIGN which is a creative concept that designs and manages corporate, non-profit and nightlife events, and also writes the “Looking for the Perfect Beat” column for Local Spins. Todd is also one of the founding team members for TEDxGrandRapids. As for Groove Cruise, he notes: “I have always been a student of nightlife and festival culture. That said, raising two kids never really allowed my wife and I the time or resources to attend Groove Cruise, despite it always taking place over our wedding anniversary. With both kids almost out of college, and leading into our 24th anniversary, it seemed fitting that 2025 would be our first foray into one of the most revered experiential offerings within electronic music.”
Copyright 2025, Spins on Music LLC