It was not all that long ago when getting information on a cruise vacation meant a trip to a travel agency. Once there, travelers would sit across the desk from a travel professional who would size them up, find out what they are looking for in the way of a vacation and make recommendations. They would be shown some colorful brochures, have their questions answered and at some point book that vacation which may have been a cruise. Or maybe not. They might have booked a trip to Vegas, some all-inclusive island resort or European destination among other choices. Today, the whole process is different as an increasingly social travel world, dominated by popular cruise vacations, successfully incorporates today’s technology and social tools at just about the same rate as the public is adopting them.
That’s the trick some sources have learned: To keep pace with the public.
Princess Cruises was one of the first to embrace today’s social environment with their Twitter press trips which brought writers, bloggers and photographers, along with their “followers”, up close and personal with the Princess product. I went on one of those to Alaska. It was a fabulous experience and a successful experiment for Princess that established them as a serious player in today’s electronic social media realm.
But the Princess #FollowMeAtSea Twitter press trip was just a beginning for the line. To better target the desired audience and pass along meaningful, engaging information, Princess looked deeper.
While the Twitter press trips did put Princess Cruises in the social spotlight to an entirely different market of potential passengers, a whole bunch of people out there had not adopted Twitter. Many had adopted Facebook though and were becoming increasingly Internet-savvy, searching web sites for “great deals”, information and guidance about cruise vacations. In a nearly-perfectly timed move, Princess started their 50 Essential Experiences: The Travel Bucket List blog with long-time Princess employees serving as destination guides in weekly posts that have been both informative and personally engaging.
Now counting down the last posts on the year-long project, Princess this week revealed Egypt as “Essential Experience #42” on its blog, leaving only eight more experiences yet to be revealed. In the Egypt entry, Strategic Pricing Analyst Norma Serrano relives her first visit to Egypt with her mother by her side as she explored the pyramids and treasures of King Tut.
She writes: “Standing near the Great Pyramid, I felt this energy in a tangible, tingling way. I had never connected with a place like that before.”
This is personally engaging stuff, each week, that conveys the relevant information travelers want to know.
Also relevant, on a totally different platform, is Carnival Cruise Line’s senior cruise director John Heald’s blog. This long running play-by-play account of life on a cruise ship features daily posts by Heald that are both informative and witty. Frequent readers often get the most current information about what is actually going on right now with Carnival Cruises as well as Heald’s personal take on news events. Started in 2007, the entries come from wherever the ship Heald happens to be serving on at the time is located and features comments and an ongoing conversation with readers. Again, that element of personal engagement comes into play as the single most effective part of it all as Heald interacts with readers.
As the public continued to adopt technology-driven cruise content, Carnival dove head first into 2011 starting with their sponsorship of the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration as “Official Confetti Sponsor” and Heald was there to kick things off. Carnival invited everyone to get in on their signature “fun” by visiting their New Years Eve “Wishing Wall.” Visitors shared their hopes and dreams for 2011 on slips of red, white and blue paper that will be added to the confetti used on New Years Eve. Make that a ton of confetti that fell literally in-your-face engagingly on Times Square.
Born at that time was Carnivals “Hey America, DidJa Ever?” focus where the line collected the “Top 100 Firsts” from over 420,000 Facebook fans. Those fans were encouraged to tighten up relationships by sharing experiences through photos and videos aimed to create events and memories. Since then, Carnival has been helping make those dreams come true for fans, giving away everything from cruise vacations for four to the opportunity to appear on stage with a favorite band.
That was probably one of the most defining moments for a cruise industry who had looked at the online social movement with caution. Carnival jumped in with both feet and others soon followed. Not to hawk last-minute cruise sales, they had other venues to do that. Not to spread around press releases in yet another medium, that had been done too. But to lock in on personal engagement as the focus of what they do to promote their product. Adding the personal element has allowed Carnival to get out their message encouraging guests to step outside of our comfort zone and try something new. Its a keystone element in the immersive cruise experience invented by Carnival almost 40 years ago, brought up to speed for the world of today.
Keeping up with what is happening at sea has always been a topic of interest for cruise travelers though. The very nature of travel on ship at sea that moves around as opposed to a stationery land vacation opened the door for king-daddy of engagement, CruiseCritic.com and their safe, hosted and monitored message boards. They have so many active members posting so frequently that the 10+ year-old top-tier cruise information source is unmatched to this day. As a travel agent, I felt confident that if I really wanted to know the answer to a really specific question, CruiseCritic was the place to go to find it. I remember once going to their Princess Cruises message board asking “Does anyone know which direction the sofa in cabin D733 is facing? Towards the front or back of the ship?” This was a question the cruise line representatives themselves could not answer live over the phone but one important to a client at the time. I got an answer within ten minutes that proved accurate.
CruiseCritic too has evolved along with their member-readers into much more, garnering top spot as the most accurate source of information on last-minute ship itinerary changes due to weather for example. That’s a topic of keen interest for those traveling during hurricane season which earned CruiseCritic respect of readers and promoted a community spirit that runs deep. Those same members one gets to “know” on message boards post helpful reviews from their frequent cruise vacations, again bringing in the personal engagement element, offering advice and information rivaling the quality received from a close friend in real life.
This is where CruiseCritic is writing what will be the future of cruise information.
CruiseCritic has become so socially engaging that information from them is often better than that we can get from real people we know in real life. A blog, features, current news and much more positions CruiseCritic to be a top source of engaging information well into the future.
That traveler hunger for transparent, personally engaging information also led to the birth of CruiseRadio.net. Once viewed as a source for extreme cruise fanatics (much like CruiseCritic was for a long time) the online weekly online radio episodes take creator Doug Parker and host Matt Basford deep into living rooms, office cubicles, and pretty much anywhere an Internet signal can be had in a way no other medium has been able to.
Interviews with shore-side and at-sea cruise line personnel as well as experts in various areas of travel bring listeners into the ongoing discussion of relevant issues. Just completing their 100th episode this week, CruiseRadio looks to be very much a part of the future of engaging cruise information in yet another untapped medium. With a format that is easily adaptable to cover current issues along with a stable of experts in recurring segments on various related travel topics, CruiseRadio should be a major player in the cruise information game for a long time to come.
And that brings us to the future of cruise vacations and information about them.
Already, those colorful brochures are disappearing from the shelves of travel agencies worldwide as cruise lines look to save millions in printing costs and reduce their carbon footprint, a hot-button topic for environmentalists critical of the industry anyway. Better suited for todays fast-paced travel environment where ships are moved from troubled waters forcing itinerary changes, online brochures those same travel agents can create for their clients will provide better information, updated as needed, in a way brochures can’t.
On our basic cruise information site, LifeIsCruising.com, we’re celebrating 10 years online this year. In the beginning, I could post a particular ship’s itinerary and it stayed pretty much the same from year to year. Now, that information changes so quickly that we don’t even try to keep up with it and continue focusing on the basic cruise experience for first-time cruisers. There are still a lot of first-timers out there, hungry for information, and one thing is for sure; the immersive, inclusive and now engaging nature of a cruise vacation continues to draw them in.
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