Personal tech has grown rapidly in recent years - with many lines taking advantage
The modern cruise passenger expects a wide range of amenities onboard ship, especially given the grandiose promises made by cruise lines’ promotional literature and the guests’ own travel agents.
In particular, in this age of constant connectivity, a high proportion of passengers expect to be able to use the same personal technology – smartphones, wifi, tablets – to keep in touch as they would if at home or at work. But in cruising, many guests find this a tall order. Cruise lines have traditionally had less of an incentive to provide this kind of technology than, say, onshore hotels, especially given that installing connectivity onboard ship is more complex than doing so in a hotel.
On a cruise, guests are supposedly attempting to escape at least some, if not all, of the intrusions, affairs and rigours of home and work life. But cruise executives know that, for many people in our modern world, the idea of the ‘get away from it all’ type of holiday is becoming a thing of the past. And they are discovering they do after all have a big incentive to make guests’ use of personal technology seamless from shore to ship.
On top of this, with the growth of the cruise market expanding, guest experience is a top priority for all operators. Any help technology can give in eliminating delays and keeping guests informed and happy is a critical factor in persuading them to cruise again. For cruise providers as for businesses in every sector, customer retention is of the utmost importance; it’s easier to make a repeat sale to a happy customer than it is to attract a new one.
Today, at the very least, cruise lines are providing customers with some of the seamless experience they seek by way of technology installed in their staterooms. Guest communication systems, usually residing on an in-cabin TV console, are immediately attractive from the operator’s perspective; they have the potential not only to improve customer satisfaction but also to drive strong revenue by advertising paid events and shore excursions.
Such systems can, in theory, allow guests to make dining reservations, order room service or even pay their bills. Self-service settlement of bills in particular is a boon for the line, as it helps smooth the end of the voyage, which is vital for efficient operation and customer satisfaction. The systems also offer radio reception, message delivery, and other bedside functions such as alarm calls.
Older technology elements, such as the desk telephone, have a questionable future. When ship-to-shore communication was more limited, the telephone was useful, but now, with satellites providing almost ubiquitous ship-to-shore coverage, their use is mostly confined to intra-ship calls. Most guests know to use other means, such as Skype, to reach the shore, rather than access a ‘house’ phone.
Biometrics and RFID are likely to infuse not only in-cabin and onboard high-tech but even more so security provision. Biometric functions such as facial recognition and touch-free palm scanning are likely destined for cruise ship ubiquity, for they minimise interruption to guest queues and afford minimal contact with potentially disease- or grime-carrying surfaces.
RFID functions seem equally promising. A special RFID-enabled wrist or ankleband can serve to identify a guest anywhere onboard – without the guest having to remember to put it on or carry it in a wallet (as with a typical magnetic-striped key or credit card); it can even be worn for swimming. By recognising and identifying the wearers or holders of RFID devices, for example, in-cabin sensors can detect guests’ presence; this could be very useful for onboard security.
Not too surprisingly, many cruise lines have an onshore equivalent of their onboard technology provision. Several have created smartphone applications, mostly free ones, and have made them available to existing and potential guests. These apps, whether on the Apple iPhone/iPad or Google Android platform, help potential customers instantly visualise and plan cruises to faraway destinations and otherwise attempt to ease or illuminate, for guests, the process of buying, planning and taking a cruise.
A survey by Frommer’s last spring listed nearly a dozen mobile apps produced by cruise lines. These included Celebrity Xplorer, CruiseNCL, Lindblad Expeditions Podcasts, the Royal Caribbean International app (all of which are available free from the Apple iTunes online store, Costa App and the SeaDream app (which as well as iTunes can be obtained from the Android Market), and the Holland America Glacier Bay Podcasts, which can be downloaded from the cruise line’s own website. From this it’s apparent that the cruise lines, like many commercial sectors, have migrated some front-end sales and marketing functions to the world of mobile applications. Other cruise-related apps don’t come from the cruise lines themselves, but rather from third party developers, and, as such, cost the user to download them. Costing at most US$4.99, though, applications such as Cruise Control, Cruise Cam, Cruise Webcams and Deck Director – the Onboard Cruise Ship Guide could become increasingly useful to passengers and guests.
For potential guests especially interested in technology, there are even tech-themed cruises available. For example, InSight Cruises, a educational conference business in California, offers its MacMania cruises for Apple addicts. The latest, MacMania 11, in February 2011, was a 12-day Patagonian trip, sailing from Buenos Aires to Santiago on Holland America Line’s Oosterdam.
Along with shore visits, the cruise featured courses such as ‘Master your iPad’, ’60 iPhone Apps in 60 Minutes’, and ‘Managing Multiple Macs’. Neil Bauman, InSight Cruises’ CEO, says that MacMania 12 has already sold out. Planned future cruises include MacMania 14 in April 2012, which will be a riverboat experience featuring an optional postcruise tour of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European nuclear research organisation near Geneva. In November 2012, MacMania 15 will visit Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef, and New Caledonia with topics such as ‘Living with the Cloud’, ‘Turbocharge Your Mac Productivity’ and ‘Whole House Audio’.
Even aside from these speciality cruises, there’s no doubt that technology is becoming an increasingly important part of the cruising experience. Judiciously used, technology has the potential to deliver a better experience for the passenger while making the cruise operation – from front end sales and marketing all the way through to the end of the voyage – more efficient; a true win/win.