For A Satisfying Experience, Sail Sooner, Not Later, As The Cruising Industry Bulks Up

As the cruise industry holds its annual North American conferences this month in Florida we fled further south to the Amazon. Last year we attended the conventions and heard the annual pitch for continued growth and profitability. This year we chose the calm and isolation of the Amazon to reflect on what we consider the paramount challenge facing the industry: consistency within a cruise brand, across all ships, all itineraries, and every single sailing.

The challenge applies equally to budget "party boat" brands aimed at 20 somethings, mass-market "amusement park" brands pushing huge ships as destinations in themselves, and the self-styled "luxury" brands that present themselves as premium or expedition experiences.

It's A People Business

Cruising is at its core a people business. The ultimate point of contact is not an Internet booking site or an apres sailing online satisfaction questionnaire. It is the face-to-face contact of customers with staff and crew. This human touch was easier to enforce two decades ago when there were two-thirds fewer cabins to sell and customer expectations were lower. Guests had been exposed to little of the now highly polished social media and other online promotion that drives cruise sales today.


Our first cruise 20 years ago on the Tahitian Princess was delightful. We had no idea the small ocean-view cabin might years later be considered inferior. And afternoon tea in the dining room was presented correctly, with service and quality you would be hard pressed to find today, even on pricey all-inclusive ships that require you to fetch your own scone from a buffet line.

Brands And Customers Have High Hopes For New Ships

For some brands, the meaning of "all-inclusive" continues to gravitate from quality towards quantity of food, volume of music, less attentive and less personalized service. Discerning customers and the cruise lines themselves hope that a new generation of smaller and more luxurious "expedition" ships will attract the high end of the market and make it profitable.

In five or six years, 550 ships will compete, according to Cruise Industry News. And they will compete not just for paying passengers, but also for the increased officers, staff, and crew required. The business is struggling to meet the need for travel industry-experienced managers and properly trained crew, building or adding to recruiting and training operations in Asia and trying new educational technologies. For example, and somewhat incongruously, one brand recently adopted a virtual reality training system (consider the alternative) to help new restaurant employees better deal with actual humans.

The Contradiction Of Contrary Reviews

Customer satisfaction with a specific cruise line can vary dramatically from ship to ship and sailing date to sailing date and year to year. That is our own experience and you can find similar discrepancies among reviews on marketing sites like CruiseCritic.com, with some guests loving the food or entertainment and other guests hating the same features. Of course, the contradictory reviews also reflect the varied sensibilities and travel experiences of each passenger. This is most obvious when such contradictions occur for the same ship and sailing.

Trending: Luxury In Smaller Packages

While mass-market brands expand capacity arithmetically, "luxury" cruise lines are about to expand exponentially with dozens of ships scheduled for launch in the next few years, including the 200-passenger SeaDream Innovation yacht, 200 to 300 passenger "expedition" ships, and thousand-passenger vessels like those introduced by Viking. A remarkable 40 such ships are on order for delivery over the next eight years, as cataloged and illustrated here by Cruise Industry News.

National Geographic Endurance

126

 guests due

 2020

This creates opportunities for potentially extraordinary guest experiences. And it presents monumental challenges for companies trying to hire professional staff and find uncrowded top-drawer destinations with first-class port facilities, attractions, and ground agents. This high-end of the market represents at most 10 percent of the total cruise market, but it is likely where there will be the greatest conflict between customer expectations and what newly-hired staff can deliver.

Luxury Cruise Bargains May Be Coming

Add up all that capacity and one can speculate that competition in the luxury marketplace will continue to intensify, fighting over not only style and substance but also over price. Watch for relative bargains on contested itineraries and even some brand consolidations or drop-outs as the building cycle peaks next decade.

Do not conclude that we discourage cruising today. We encourage it: cruise sooner rather than later, before destinations become ever more crowded, and the very concept of cruising becomes a less distinctive alternative to other holiday options-- considered by many potential consumers as a generic and repetitive experience.

Dining aboard the RMS Caronia from a 1950s Cunard World Cruise brochure

This Cunard promotional film from the 1950s evokes nostalgia for when cruising had a closer relationship to the ports of call, their peoples, and the sea itself. We enjoyed a brief return to that largely lost experience during three nights on the 150-guest Iberostar Grand Amazon, riding small metal hull boats up narrow jungle channels for hours each day and dining on authentic northern Brazilian cuisine actually procured locally.

The choice is yours: Do you prefer sunset in the Amazon or caviar in the pool?

Sunset In The Amazon

Caviar In The Pool