This Blog is for New to Cruise and the well Traveled , on this site we will publish information about Cruise and Holiday information, with some insider stories in the travel press.
AMBASSADOR CHIEF PLAYS DOWN 'SPECULATION' ON LINE'S FINANCES
The boss of Ambassador Cruise Line, Christian Verhounig, has played down "speculation" about the line’s finances after it cancelled two festive cruises onboard Ambiance, stressing the decision was made "for safety reasons only".
Posting to his public Facebook page, addressing guests, officers, staff and crew directly, Verhounig said the line was left with no option but to cancel its Festive Market Getaway and Christmas and New Year Canary Islands cruises owing to an issue with Ambiance’s lifeboat stations, requiring unscheduled maintenance.
"I am sad we had no option but to withdraw these itineraries, a sentiment shared by my colleagues in the Ambassador management team," said chief executive Verhounig. "Events like these never happen at a good time, but technical issues and challenges are unfortunately part of a cruise company’s day-to-day life – and we, at Ambassador, will never compromise on the safety of our guests or crew, however, low the risk."
Verhounig went on to address the line’s financial health. "As a business, we have never been anything less than transparent, and we will continue to be so in the interests of our valued guests and employees. The recent changes to our operation were made for safety reasons only, and not, as some have speculated online, due to the financial position of the Ambassador.
"I want to reassure you that we are a financially robust business with trust arrangements in place and full insurance cover for incidents of this kind designed to ensure that all our guests are and will remain fully protected."
Verhounig apologised to guests affected by the cancellations, as well as the Ambassador crew and shoreside staff. "It was the last thing we wanted to do. I can only personally say I’m sorry, and I hope one day our guests will offer us the chance to make amends for the inconvenience and disruption caused.
"As well as offering our sincere and heartfelt apologies to all guests affected by these recent developments, I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise to the team - from those in the UK, who have been outstanding in coming together at such short notice to do their very best at this difficult time, to the staff and crew onboard, who have been so looking forward to hosting our guests over Christmas and into the New Year."
Explaining the specific circumstances of the cancellations, Verhounig revealed Ambiance had in the months of December and January been due to undergo a planned independent survey to renew its Passenger Ship Safety Certificate.
"The inspection covers hundreds of different safety, technical and operational checks onboard the vessel, which is conducted both at sea and in port across a two-month period," Verhounig continued. "This annual cycle is linked to the anniversary of the ship being built, and is not in any way related to when Ambassador actually started trading."
’WE’LL BE BACK STRONGER
Verhounig said one of the required checks involved the safe and secure lowering of the ship’s lifeboats. During an inspection of the lifeboat stations on Sunday 18 December, a surveyor observed a slight movement of one of the sheaves used for guiding the steel wire ropes that move and hold the lifeboats in position.
"When checking on this movement further, the inspection brought to light a hairline crack on the bracket holding these sheaves in position, and more of these were found in a similar position on other brackets," said Verhounig.
"While none of these would have interfered in any way with the ship’s safe operation immediately, these cracks could have led to potential issues in the future and needed to be repaired. Therefore, we decided to immediately arrange repairs and not to operate the itineraries."
He added: "Ambassador and Ambience will be back in operation in the New Year, stronger than ever."
Carnival Cruise Line Introduces New Funderstruck Marketing Campaign
Carnival Cruise Line will launch a new marketing campaign, “Funderstruck,” that invites people to choose fun again by booking and taking a vacation, according to a press statement.
Built upon Carnival’s brand platform Choose Fun, the company introduces an entirely new word – Funderstruck – to "describe the unmistakable feeling uniquely experienced when choosing fun on Carnival."
Funderstruck will celebrate what travellers want right now and something that Carnival is precision-engineered to deliver – unapologetic fun together with those you enjoy spending time with the most, the company said.
Carnival will introduce Funderstruck first through CRM and owned social followed by a series of back-to-back campaign activations during two pivotal Holiday cultural moments.
The first Funderstruck spots will air on ESPN and ABC during the NBA on Christmas Day games, in addition to the game and pre-game sponsorships.
Funderstruck will then be featured with Carnival sponsoring the iconic Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration, through a collaboration with ABC and the New York Times Square Alliance.
In addition to the Christmas and NYE integrations, the Funderstruck message will be used across all Carnival owned channels, OOH placements in key port and feeder markets, :15 and :30 National TV commercials, and digitally led efforts highlighted by streaming video, streaming audio, podcasts, unique high impact display and video efforts, and social presence across TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.
In several spots, guests enjoy the many Funderstruck experiences that Carnival has to offer, from riding BOLT, the first roller coaster at sea, to simply enjoying a delicious chocolate ice cream, most notably with other passengers who share an unabashed sense of euphoria and delight in being together again.
“Funderstruck is the unmistakable feeling when you choose fun on Carnival, and the kind of joyful experience essential to people’s health and happiness,” said Pete Callaro, senior vice president of brand and product marketing for Carnival Cruise Line. “Carnival cruises are the perfect vacation to enjoy with those you’ve missed having fun with over the past year.”
The campaign, created by Anomaly, is an extension of the brand’s Choose Fun campaign that launched in 2018. All paid media and integration elements were created by the Initiative and supported by the public relations consultancy LDWW.
For additional information on Carnival Cruise Line and to book a cruise vacation, call 1-800-CARNIVAL, visit www.carnival.com, or contact your favourite travel advisor or online travel site.
Carnival Cruise Line Extends Homeport COVID Testing Through Year-End
Carnival Cruise Line has extended the availability of coronavirus testing at its homeports through the end of December 2021. This was announced in a Facebook post by the cruise line’s brand ambassador John Heald.
The testing is available for vaccinated guests who sail from Galveston, Baltimore, New Orleans and Long beach through DocGo and for vaccinated passengers sailing from Miami, Port Canaveral and Tampa via Rapid Cruise Testing.
Appointments must be made online and are non-refundable at the price of $100 per person.
Heald asked Carnival guests to use the homeport testing services only if they “exhausted all other ways to get tested such as tests by your local pharmacy, monitored home tests etc.”
“This will be more affordable plus most importantly it will give you peace of mind knowing you already have your negative result 48 hours before your fun starts,” Heald explained.
Any appointment made with the testing centres and not taken will not be refunded in December, according to him.
“The reason for this is that we had people not show up and then ask for a refund which in turn meant that people who wanted appointments could not get them. So, for December there will be no refunds made,” Heald explained.
Bahamas Paradise’s Grand Celebration Likely Getting Scrapped
Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line’s Grand Celebration is likely heading to the end of her cruise career as the ship is rumoured to have been sold for scrap and is currently sailing toward India, where the 1987-built vessel is expected to arrive in early January.
Company officials did not return a request for comment, while a separate Facebook post from the cruise operator reassuring guests they would return to service soon has since been removed.
The cruise line’s website has also been simplified recently, while its booking engine has been offline for at least three weeks.
“Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line is pleased to announce that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has lifted the no-sail order and provided new guidelines for cruises to resume sailing. Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line is now working to comply with all requirements to ensure a safe return for guests to Grand Bahama Island,” the company said, on its website, noting it will “be accepting reservations very soon.”
With the Grand Celebration presumably exiting the fleet, it leaves the company with the more modern Grand Classica under its banner, offering two-night cruises to the Bahamas from Palm Beach.
Royal Caribbean Sees 100,000 Sign Ups for Free Volunteer Cruises
Independence of the Seas in Southampton UK.
Royal Caribbean International has over 100,000 form submissions for volunteers to take trial cruises as part of the CDC's new Conditional Framework to restart cruising in the United States.
Forms filled out required a person's name, phone number, email, Crown and Anchor Society number, and the number of people in a person's party, meaning the cruise line likely has upwards of 200,000 potential volunteers assuming each form submitted is for two people.
The news came via Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley in a Facebook post.
As the American author, salesperson and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, "Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24-hour days."
I talk with a lot of business professionals who tell me they want to devote more time to social media marketing tasks to improve their brand presence, attract new customers or engage with clients. Many social media managers feel that social media moves at a fast pace, which makes it hard to keep up.
Also, if a business does not have a clear plan in place, then competing priorities will most likely bump social media marketing tasks off the to-do list. If this sounds familiar, keep reading to discover five action items to keep social media marketing tasks on track.
Action item No. 1: Use data to set goals and establish priorities.
At the cornerstone of any social-media marketing strategy is data. Analyzing data can provide valuable insights to help guide decisions. Every three months, travel agents should be taking a deep dive into social media metrics to make decisions about where to spend time and money on this form of marketing.
There are many ways to analyze data. For example, does video, text or imagery generate comments, shares and likes? How about other engagement performance statistics that track reach or interactions by social channel? And don't forget about website traffic reports that reveal acquisition and conversion stats. Travel professionals need to know how visitors are coming to a website and also how many of those visitors are responding to calls to action on specific landing pages.
There are free metric reports available on each social media channel for business owners. You can combine those reports with website data details via Google Analytics for a complete picture.
To learn more about metrics and how to create a social media marketing plan you should read:
Making sure that consistent branding meets your online audience is necessary for public relations and for presenting a professional image online.
If you don't have time to devote to posting regularly on social media, at least the online audience can find out more about your company.
Some people set up social media accounts and forget to check back with the descriptions to make sure the information is accurate and full of keywords. Make sure there is an address and that details about your travel niche and images are consistent and up to date.
Consider making a spreadsheet that lists all your company's social media handles and stats. Not only will a spreadsheet of all the social media channels with links to the websites be a time-saver; it can also serve as a file to keep track of growth numbers for setting goals.
Do a search for your business name on all social media channels to see if there are orphan accounts, which someone at your company or you set up and then forgot to use (this does happen).
In fact, a Facebook search on your business name might show results for competitors or spammers who are using the name of your business.
Facebook Search is also helpful to glean information about suppliers. Pay attention to other travel agents who are ranked on Facebook search along with your suppliers because of keywords in their business descriptions.
Action item No. 3: Use social media tools for better time management.
To combat the frustration caused by not knowing what to post or not having enough time to post on numerous social media channels, consider using tools to help curate content and to post messages on multiple accounts at the same time. Here are some tools to help accomplish more with less time.
Find content to share with online audiences with tools such as Google Alerts,Feedly, Scoop.it or Storify.
Use a tool such as Hootsuite to manage multiple social media accounts in one location.
Action item No. 4: Develop an asset library of sharable content.
Can you relate? It is Wave season, and your competitor seems to have sponsored ads all over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You have a budget set aside for social media advertising (in fact, your preferred suppliers are even willing to co-op some of the expense), but you don't have the time it takes to edit photos and to create compelling paid-ad campaigns.
Why not create a content action plan to anticipate the needs of consumers looking for travel products?
The following are suggestions for planning ad campaigns that increase brand awareness and engagement (remember engagement means access to more people who will become familiar with your brand; social selling is all about relationships).
Collect and save photos from suppliers or recent site visits to use for ad campaigns. Use a photo-editing app on your smartphone or a program such as Canva.com or PicMonkey.com to compare two vacation destinations side by side and ask the audience to pick their favorite. The image can be used on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter with a call to action asking the audience to pick the best one.
Generate small videos to share online. Next time you are on vacation or on a fam trip, start recording video. These can be edited quickly with Google Photos or with iMovie on an iPhone. Add music and narration later.
Have a list of popular hashtags at the ready. Hashtags are very versatile and can be used for building one's audience, promote an event or develop a sweepstakes campaign.
Action item No. 5.: Research the competition and use your suppliers to help with social media tasks.
Travel agents are competing for screen time for consumers who are on information overload.
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to finding generic content to share with the online audience, it makes more sense to get inspiration from your competition and suppliers.
Because social media is a public forum, there is no harm in exploring how the competition is using it. Perhaps there was a new product launch that you forgot to mention online; maybe there was a press release about a new cruise line, hotel or promotion that you did not read.
All these scenarios are realistic ways that travel agents can miss the boat when it comes to opportunities to share usable information with a target audience.
Instead of trying to develop original ideas, get inspired by the competition and use your suppliers to help with social media marketing tasks.
The following tools help find useable content to repurpose and keep an eye on the competition:
Research with Tagboard. Use hashtags to search for and collect public social media within seconds to streamline work flows.
Use DrumUp to explore keyword searches and curate trending content.
Let me know how your quest for the information presented will inspire travel professionals to re-evaluate their approach to social media marketing tasks to save time and generate maximum results.
Although travel is among the most visual of products, a
surprisingly small number of agents are engaging with social media platforms
built for photos and videos.
Facebook has become a place where many travel agents have
successfully built a personal brand through posting photos of their travels and
in many cases themselves. It has turned into a lead generator, often creating
business or sparking a desire to travel in a past client, thanks to a
well-placed destination photo or video.
But while their Facebook presence has grown, agents have
largely been underutilizing other social media platforms, such as Instagram and
YouTube, which because of their inherently visual nature lend themselves to
travel products and could be powerful lead-generation tools.
Earlier this year, the travel search website Hipmunk
released a study touching upon where millennials get their travel ideas. The
data shows the potential of social media platforms other than Facebook: The
study found that 44% of millennials get their travel inspiration from YouTube
videos, 28% from Instagram.
"Overall, social media within the marketing media
landscaping has officially arrived as a major opportunity for our industry for
a few reasons," said Sam McCully, vice president of marketing at Avoya
Travel.
Moreover, McCully said that potential opportunities are not
limited to millennials, as more and more travelers in a wide range of ages are
taking to social media throughout their entire vacation process, from the
planning stage right through their return home.
"Is there an untapped opportunity?" McCully said.
"I would say absolutely."
MSC rolls out new faster internet and social media packages
MSC Cruises has worked with business communications provider Marlink to develop new faster, more reliable and cost-effective internet and social media packages for guests.
Now live onboard MSC Preziosa and MSC Divina, the high bandwidth internet packages are available via the Marlink Sealink Cloud and will be rolled out across all 12 MSC ships over the coming months. The packages will also be available on the line’s next-generation ships that are currently under construction, including MSC Meraviglia and MSC Seaside.
“We are constantly seeking new ways to innovate and enhance the guest experience aboard what is already the most modern fleet at sea,” said Gianni Onorato, MSC’s CEO. “We know that staying connected while on holiday is increasingly more important to our guests hence we are rolling out state-of-the-art technology to allow them to stay connected whether they are looking to share experiences and memorable moments, stay in touch with friends and family, need to stay on top of work e-mails or simply catch up with daily news.”
Aimed at those who want to be connected 24/7 to social media, the Social Package allows guests to post pictures and chat with friends via popular social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat, WeChat and Pinterest. Prices start from €3.90 per day or €14.90 for a seven-day cruise.
The Surfer Package is designed for moderate internet users who want to read news, sports scores and catch up on e-mails. It also includes access to social media platforms as per the Social Package. Prices start from €9.90 per day or €29.90 for a seven-day itinerary.
Meanwhile, the Streamer Package has been created for heavy internet users who need access either for work or for personal use and enables full internet and social media access, including audio and video. Prices from €19.90 per day or €59.90 for a full seven-day voyage.
Guests will be able to select their package prior to embarkation and will be easy to upgrade or top up.
As cruise lines search for ways to appeal to younger guests, one item in the toolbox is the app, that downloadable software that makes a smartphone into more than just a device to make calls.
By one estimate, the average smartphone user has 41 apps installed on his or her device, used for everything from calculating tips to forecasting weather or playing games. Now cruise passengers are finding room on their screens for apps from the cruise lines.
Within the past two years, most of the large cruise lines have rolled out at least one app for customers. They generally fall into two categories. The first provides precruise information to help customers research their trip and check out shore excursion or ship info.
The second category is designed to help passengers once they embark by enhancing the onboard experience.
While it seems like they've been around forever, apps only really took off in the summer of 2008 when Apple opened its App Store shortly after introducing the iPhone in 2007.
Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that app downloads from the store had surpassed 100 billion since it opened.
WiFi access on cruises has led to shrinking of Internet cafes
Once the cutting edge of electronic sophistication, computer stations are now seeing less demand, so cruise lines are cutting back on them and redeploying the space. Read More
The rise of apps dovetailed with dramatically increased infrastructure spending by the cruise industry on Internet connectivity at sea and WiFi networks that enabled guests to use personal devices to access the Web onboard.
Because shipboard apps function by piggybacking on a WiFi network, it was only after onboard wireless services were upgraded and strengthened that they could reliably work.
Cruise lines offer their apps for free, and most are downloadable from the App Store for iPhones and iPads as well as from Google Play for Android-based devices. Some cruise lines charge a fee to use the app for chat communication, which is one of the most popular functions.
But unlike WiFi connectivity, which is an additional expense, apps are not seen by cruise lines as a profit generator. Rather, they are considered a service to help passengers make the onboard experience richer.
The Hub app can help Carnival Cruise Line passengers research their dining options while onboard as well as check in on any ship activities. When Carnival Cruise Line was developing its shipboard app, called Carnival Hub, it boiled the mission down to answering passenger needs at the most basic level, said Gaby Gonzalez, Carnival's vice president of guest technology and photo operations.
"If you look back at what the app was meant to solve, there were two main questions: 'What can I do now?' and 'Where's Sally?'" Gonzalez said. So Carnival paid close attention to functions that displayed daily activities on its ships and also provided person-to-person messaging.
Gonzalez said passengers have been pleased with the results, measured by positive reviews that Carnival Hub garnered in the app stores, with users rating it at 4.5 out of five stars. She said about a third of the passengers on ships outfitted for Hub use it.
The idea of the Hub [is] how do you maximize the fun of the cruise experience?" Gonzalez said. "How do you make being on a cruise better because you now have your gateway, your hub to that experience?"
Although it's very functional, Carnival Hub is currently available on only four ships, the Breeze, Dream, Magic and Sunshine, although the line said the plan is for it to be available on all ships by the end of 2016. Royal Caribbean International's Royal IQ app is offered only on its Quantum-class ships, and some lines don't offer an app.
In general, small-ship cruise lines are less likely to invest in a shipboard app.
"If you look at our fleet, which is made up of smaller, more intimate ships and where a majority of them carry 700 passengers or less, it's kind of hard to get lost while onboard," said Jason Lasecki, spokesman for Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Oceania Cruises, neither of which offers an app.
The Royal Caribbean app, available on Quantum-class ships, displays events on the daily Cruise Compass. One of the few lines to make its app available fleetwide is Princess Cruises, in part because Princess@Sea is a website accessible through a browser rather than a downloadable program. That approach made it easier to implement, and it is accessible on laptops, at terminals in the ship's Internet cafe and for devices other than mobile phones and tablets.
Development of Princess@Sea started early in the winter of 2012 and was timed to launch with the debut of the Royal Princess in 2013, said Nate Craddock, the project lead for guest experience applications at Princess Cruises.
A look at how Princess@Sea functions demonstrates the variety of features that shipboard apps include. The landing page is mostly about events and schedules: times for movies, happy hours, contests and the like. There is some basic weather information for the day and a quartet of buttons at the bottom that lead to other pages with more information.
The events button, for example, takes passengers to a listing of all happenings during the cruise (events for the current day are displayed on the landing page). Users can touch or click on an event link to add it to a personalized agenda called My Cruise Planner.
An Internet button connects to the passenger's Web account (using Princess@Sea itself does not incur Internet charges).
A Messenger button initiates the chat function. Each user of Princess@Sea has a unique identification number. Users who want to chat with each other exchange these numbers. Group chats are also possible.
The More button is a gateway to a variety of extra functions. Like most shipboard apps, Princess@Sea has a stateroom account page where passengers can view an itemized list of what they've spent.
Another page leads to information about bars, restaurants, lounges and the casino. For example, the Adagio Bar page lists hours, displays a menu, has a photo gallery and includes a descriptive paragraph.
A Map It button brings up a deck plan for any location being researched.
The More tab is also where passengers can go deep into the ship's itinerary. Clicking on a port of call brings up arrival and departure info, a brief description and photos.
A page on Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for example, includes a selection of restaurants that offer authentic local cuisine, fun facts and how to take part in a sea turtle protection program. There's information on the port's ties to Hollywood, tropical birds that are native to the area and a bar where guests can enter and exit on a burro. Another area has other information guests need about where they are docked, proper attire, nearby beaches, shopping, tipping customs, banks and post office locations and emergency numbers.
A general-information page contains a variety of useful items typically found in the loose-leaf binders on the desk of a passenger cabin, things like communications and stateroom services and safety and environmental reminders. There's even a security section that lists phone numbers for the FBI, Coast Guard and a national sexual-assault hotline.
To help passengers who may not be digitally savvy, Princess has trained staff members who interact with guests to walk them through any problems they have with the app, Craddock said.
Princess guests can request a reference sheet from guest services or at the Internet cafe front desk. Cruise directors include a brief Princess@Sea how-to in the daily Wake show, and commercials for the app run during gaps in programming on the in-cabin TV system.
Although the Princess@Sea website has some features common to many cruise line apps, each line has its own approach. Here's a look at what some other lines offer.
Carnival Cruise Line
In addition to person-to-person chat, which costs $5 per person, per voyage, Carnival Hub is popular with small groups because it enables joint chats.
"When people are traveling in groups of 20 or so, we actually prepopulate the contacts list that enables that connectivity," Gonzalez said. "If you arrive together in a group of 20, you'll already see in your contact list the 20 people."
For 2016, Carnival is focusing on two things. The first is expanding Hub fleetwide; Gonzalez said her goal is to have that accomplished by the end of the year. The second is to add the ability for passengers to use the app to download and buy shipboard photos.
Celebrity Cruises focused its app on cruise planning rather than on listing onboard activities. Celebrity Cruises
Celebrity has focused its Celebrity Destinations app on cruise planning rather than on shipboard activities. Its app offers videos and rich imagery of the ports Celebrity visits, itineraries and maps of Celebrity tours, profiles of the line's shore excursions, interactive deck plans and other planning aids. Celebrity also has a separate Cruise Lingo app that translates useful phrases on a customer's phone into a variety of languages.
Costa
The Italian line's MyCostaMobile includes a 360-degree tour feature for each ship and offers free text messaging or phone service to connect with other passengers on the ship using a mobile device.
Crystal Cruises has the Storyteller as part of its app, enabling passengers to edit their photos. Crystal Cruises
Crystal's three offerings are not conventional shipboard apps. One, called the Storyteller, is a photo-editing app. Users store or share photos via Facebook or email and can create postcards from them. While using the app to edit photos is free, an Internet package is required to share photos in social media.
Crystal also has a media-player app for watching movies and Crystal-produced programming as well as enrichment lectures, while the PressReader by Newspaper Direct app lets users read U.S. and international newspapers for free while onboard.
Cunard
Carnival Corp.'s staunchly traditional Cunard Line has two mobile apps available in the App Store: one displays Cunard U.K. brochures, and the other houses the onboard magazines.
The Disney Navigator is available for use on every ship in the fleet. Among its features is a complimentary chat function. It also identifies where character interactions can be found onboard. Disney Cruise Line
Along with Princess, Disney Cruise Line is one of the few lines where apps function fleetwide. Its Navigator is similar to Princess@Sea, plus it has times and locations for children's character interactions, as well as a drink-of-the-day description for adults. Disney includes a complimentary chat function. The chat does not work on Disney's Castaway Cay private island, but passengers can view maps of the Cay on the app.
Holland America Line
HAL has an app optimized for tablets that describes its Alaska cruise offerings. Users can explore both cruises and Land+Sea Journeys with a new level of detail, including an interactive map with destination details and excursion options as well as a sampling of the line's Glacier Bay podcasts.
MSC Cruises’ app enables its passengers to book restaurants and shore excursions through its app along with keeping track of where the ship is heading. MSC Cruises
Once onboard, guests can download the MSC Traveler app to "friend" and chat with other passengers in real time. The app also enables guests to book restaurant and shore excursions, view sea conditions and weather forecasts for ports of call, check out daily activities and special events, update their location and keep up to date on global news. The app is available on a limited number of ships including the MSC Divina, Magnifica and Preziosa.
Norwegian Cruise Line’s iConcierge app enables a guest to make calls to people off the ship, and an intraship chat is available for a fee. It’s available on 11 of the line’s 14 vessels. Norwegian Cruise Line
The iConcierge app has functionality similar to the Princess@Sea website. An additional feature is the ability to make calls to and receive calls from people who are not on the ship, though additional charges apply on a per-minute basis. An intraship chat feature is priced at $7.95 per person, per voyage. The app is available on 11 of Norwegian's 14 ships. Royal Caribbean International
The debut of the Quantum of the Seas also marked the debut of the Royal IQ app.
One feature unique to Royal IQ is the ability to track luggage through the embarkation and debarkation processes, using radio-frequency identification tags. Royal's app provides for ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship calls billed at a per-minute rate. The app is featured on Quantum-class ships, including the Anthem of the Seas.
• • •
Cruise ship apps continue to be a work in progress, with lines cooking up new functions and versions. A spokeswoman for Norwegian, for example, said last month the line was working on enhancements but as of press time was not ready to talk about it.
Princess said probable improvements to Princess@Sea include the ability to redeem prepurchased gifts, a preview function for prepurchased shore excursions, a ratings and reviews section for alternative dining rooms and more collaborative tools for groups and charters.
At Carnival, there's plenty of excitement about the upcoming debut of photo downloading and purchases through the Carnival Hub app on the Carnival Vista, which will launch in May.
"You'll be able to view the photos that the photographers took of you, and you can buy them right on the app," Gonzalez said. "This is going to be a fully digital gallery, and you'll be able to download it on your phone, buy it on your phone and walk away with it."
Also on the radar at Carnival in the next few years, Gonzalez said, will be the ability to use the app to buy shore excursions. "We have a pretty rich road map ahead so that we can facilitate the cruise vacation even more," she said.
ChatSim is a SIM card that offers users the ability to message on certain apps for a baseline price of $12 per year.
An Expedia.com study recently revealed what most suspected: The majority of travelers consider their smartphones to be the most important item to bring on trips. But signing up for and using overseas calling plans offered by U.S. wireless companies are among the most frustrating, and among the most expensive, experiences consumers encounter in their journeys.
Travel advisers have taken note: The importance of keeping their clients connected internationally has not escaped them, and many are now offering more convenient options for staying connected, including applications that enable cheap international calling via WiFi, in an attempt to combat the historically expensive and confusing international plans offered by most domestic carriers.
T-Mobile is now including in some of its simple choice plans international roaming in about 140 countries with unlimited data and texts. The plans start at $50 per line per month. WiFi calls made back home to the U.S. are free, but WiFi calls to another country are 20 cents per minute, the same rate as cellular calls.
Other carriers have more complicated — and more expensive — ways to make international calls. For example, AT&T offers a three-tiered plan for coverage in some 190 countries with base charges of $30, $60 and $120. Each includes unlimited texting, but depending on the base plan, a user could pay as much as $1 per minute for calls and more for data.
In contrast, Wireless Traveler offers several popular solutions that travel advisers can share with their clients. In addition to renting and selling global phones, the company has an eponymous app that offers international calling for as low as 2 cents per minute over WiFi. It is a voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) service that is available wherever there is WiFi.
Rates vary by country, but for example, a traveler in France could call another country from the app for 3 cents per minute. Calling another person who has the app is free.
The company also offers a white-label version of the product, working with agencies and tour operators such as Valerie Wilson Travel and Collette Tours to create branded apps that offer the same calling technology. Wireless Traveler also has preferred-supplier relationships with Virtuoso, Ensemble Travel Group and others, according to CEO Ian Benson.
Valerie Wilson Travel Co-President Kimberly Wilson Wetty said she uses her company’s branded app when she travels and is impressed with the quality of the service for the price.
“It is the cheapest thing I have ever used as a service,” she said, calling the quality “so clear it was unbelievable.” Her agency promotes the app to its clients, including leisure and corporate travelers.
Wetty particularly likes that the app carries her agency’s name and logo, keeping it in the forefront of clients’ minds.
“As an agency owner, that’s one of the concerns as we look at the increased advancement of travel technology,” she said. “How do you maintain your own brand and your own relevance in a world where there’s information 24/7 and completely at your fingertips?”
Elaine Carey, an affiliate of Travel Experts, uses the app as a gift that she gives to some of her younger, more tech-savvy clients. Before they travel abroad, she pre-loads an app with $20 for them. It also provides them with a good — and free, for them — way to get in touch with her if something goes wrong on their trip, she said.
Benson said that while some agents do gift within the app, “not enough [do] in my opinion. … I think it’s a fabulous gift to give to somebody because it’s so relevant.”
Nicole Mazza, chief marketing officer of Travelsavers and NEST, said the companies encourage their agents to gift WiFi calling credit within their Affluent Traveler Talk App. Many use it as a value-add for their clients.
In addition to the Wireless Traveler app, the company offers global SIM cards, which Benson said are his biggest sellers. They work in most countries in the world through partnerships with some 400 carriers. The card costs $24.99, with $15 of free airtime included; it also includes a U.S. and European phone number.
Rates vary, but for example outgoing calls from France to the U.K. have a 40-cent connection fee and are 65 cents per minute. Text messages and data are available at additional per-country costs.
Like the Wireless Traveler app, Benson said there are agents who gift global SIM cards to clients, as well as the company’s pocket WiFi hotspots.
It is important to note that Wireless Traveler’s global SIM cards only work on unlocked GSM cell phones, meaning they will not work with Verizon handsets.
Travelers could, of course, purchase local SIM cards if they have a compatible phone once they reach their destination, but Benson said
he only recommends that for longer stays because it eats into vacation time, and the local cards cannot travel from country to country. They also expire after a set amount of time, while the global SIM card does not.
ChatSim, another relatively new international telecom service, is making its way into the U.S., and its investors are hoping agents here will start using the technology themselves and gifting it to clients, as the company is seeing internationally.
ChatSim is a SIM card that offers users the ability to message on certain apps for a baseline price of $12 per year. The card itself is also about $12, but it does not expire at the end of the year.
ChatSim works on messaging apps WhatsApp, Messenger, LINE, WeChat, imo, Kakao Talk, QQi, Hike and BBM. It provides coverage in 150 countries by connecting to over 250 service providers.
Pierre Brais, an angel investor in ChatSim, said the company differentiates itself from others thanks to its flat annual $12 fee to chat within compatible apps. The card can be ordered online through Amazon for $25, which includes the card and the first year’s $12 fee.
For an extra $12, users can buy a multimedia package of 2,000 credits, which they can use to send photos and make voice calls within apps. ChatSim estimates 2,000 credits would give a user enough bandwidth to send up to 200 photos or 50 videos or make up to 80 minutes of voice calls. Brais said around 60% to 70% of people buying the card are also buying the multimedia option.
Costs are kept down by preventing other apps on a user’s phone from running in the background, eating up data, according to Brais.
“Our tests have shown that 90% of data traffic on a smartphone now is used by the background applications on your phone,” he said, not by what the user is actually doing. The ChatSim card automatically turns off non-messaging apps to limit the amount of data used.
ChatSim has been on the market for about a year, and 100,000 cards have been sold, including to travel agents and tour operators, who are gifting the cards or selling them to clients.
The company attended the recent New York Times Travel Show and got a positive reaction from agents, Brais said, marking the start of ChatSim’s push into the U.S. market.
Brais said the card works in most unlocked, SIM-capable phones, both GSM and CDMA, meaning that unlike Wireless Traveler’s SIM cards the CDMA version of ChatSIM will work with Verizon handsets.
Smartphone the most essential travel item, survey finds
Worldwide, smartphones are travelers’ most indispensable items when they travel, even ahead of their toothbrush and driver’s license, according to the Expedia/Egencia Mobile Index.
The index, commissioned by Expedia.com and Egencia (Expedia’s business travel brand), was conducted by consulting firm It was based on input from 9,642 travelers from 19 countries.
Among U.S. respondents, one-fifth considered their smartphone to be their most essential travel item, on par with the number of respondents who said their driver’s license was the most important item to travel with. In the United States, those items tied for the most essential item for travelers.
Worldwide, 66% of respondents said smartphones are the most essential item, while 74% considered it an important travel item.
China, Taiwan and Thailand topped the charts on the countries where respondents placed the most priority on having smartphones while traveling; in China, 94% of respondents said they consider their mobile phone an important travel companion. Taiwan saw the same percentage, and in Thailand, it was 91%.
The study also found that worldwide, 84% of travelers said they want to access information from anywhere. Over half, 60%, said they do not “unplug” on leisure trips, and 35% said they use their smartphones more on vacation than at home.
Globally, 60% of travelers said they wouldn’t go on vacation without a mobile phone, and 63% sleep with their phone next to their bed on vacation.
“We have found that travelers are using mobile devices at every stage of the travel process, from researching and booking trips to capturing and sharing the travel experience,” said Aman Bhutani, president of Brand Expedia Group.
