Can Data Analytics be a Business Catalyst for Cruise Operators?

Cruise Industry Trends

The cruise industry has considerably evolved since its origin in the 18th century. From shipping companies, it has now become a major new entertaining way for vacationing, attracting a growing number of millennials guests while providing a wide-range of additional services on-board such as fitness classes, fine-dining, shows, multimedia services and inland excursions, to name of few.

As of January 2020 the cruise industry generated around $150 billion in revenues worldwide according to Forbes magazine. In this competitive battlefield, cruise operators aim to attract and retain passengers by offering a growing list of value-added-services (VAS), and lowering basic fare, around $100 to $200 a day per passenger depending on cabin type (additional services and taxes excluded).

New Challenges for Cruise Line Operators

With over 300 cruise ships and 30 cruise lines competing for guests, cruise operators are launching new on/offboard initiatives and additional products and services to differentiate themselves. Additionally, forced by the COVID-19 pandemic cruise lines have revisited their health and safety measures onboard, destinations and overall business and marketing operations.

Marketing Analytics & Objectives

To increase and retain customers, maximize revenues and reduce operational costs, several cruise operators have launched and deployed a Data Analytics Solution with the goal of optimizing passenger retention. New analytics platforms, such as Inbox America’s RiANA™, provide several automated functionalities with an integrated and proactive business logic to achieve the following goals:

Allowing the discovery of passengers preferences towards value-added services,
Providing an automated process to update in near real-time the CRM database of passengers and services consumed,
Marketing prospection to capture new customers and retarget existing ones
Embedding CRM solutions to develop a new offers such as passengers’ health and security management.

RiANA™– Marketing Analytics Solution

The RiANA™ platform provides cruise operators with the following functionalities:

A customer prospection analytics tool to forward online notifications to existing or new customers with new cruise promotional material,
A journey-wide cross-selling module to provide smarter service recommendations based on passengers predetermined preferences, including initial trip to arrive onboard (e.g. by airline), list of preferred added services, transfer options and hotel stay,
Management reports to evaluate the ROI of the cruise’s value-added-services as well as passengers’ satisfaction level.

RiANA™ Operational Solution

Two technical implementation solutions are proposed to the cruise operator depending on real-time satellite connectivity status and availability:

On-premise RiANA™ platform installed and integrated with the IT Management Applications onboard the cruise vessel, to collect in an automated fashion the Analytics parameters of the Services consumed by the Passengers, and to provide at the end of the Cruise the various reports to the Data Center/Analytics team of the Operator.
Cloud RiANA™ platform installed onboard the cruise vessel with real-time telecommunications services (satellite, Wi-FI) and integrated with the Operator Data Center CRM platform.

On behalf of the Inbox America’s team, we wish the cruise industry a successful renewal of the 2021 vacation season.

Learn more here to schedule a demonstration of RiANA™.