Cruising news

One of the newest and easiest ways to stay on top of what’s going on in the cruise industry is to see what they’re doing on their Ttwitter sites. However based on my most recent check, cruise companies are missing a great opportunity to tie in with their customers.  

If you’ve signed up on Twitter you’ll know what I mean when I say, that if you click on “Find people” and type in “cruise” you’ll get a list of what’s available right now on Twitter.  

The cruise company with the most followers right now is Princess with close to 4,000 people following them. One of the reasons is that they are constantly providing users with new information. On the day I checked they had four entries including this one which shows you a simulator deck they have in Amsterdam.

            http://www.flickr.com/photos/princesscruises/3765663733/

MSC was next with just over 1,500 followers.  In this tweet they talk about a special “Polka Cruise” they have coming up.

            http://www.msccruisesusa.com/news.asp?news_id=n72920094530&page_id=415

Holland America was next with just under 1,500 followers. Quite often you’ll find cruisers on HAL sending in pictures of their cruises. HAL has also set up their own blog where you get a bit of a behind the scenes look at how ships operate.  

            http://www.hollandamericablog.com/2009/07/27/heart-of-house-soul-of-service-–-an-introduction/

            While these are some examples of cruise lines trying to take advantage of this new social marketing tool, it appears to me that for the most part this is an initiative that few cruise lines are taking seriously. Too bad for them, because they’re missing a great new tool. 

            Cruisers have their own sites as well.  Cruise Critic seems to be one of the more active ones with nearly five thousand followers. I find their site to be the most informative. That’s likely due to the fact they are not a PR site, but more of a news site where people can share their experiences. This is one tweet that was just posted on theirs – it’s a review of the Celebrity Equinox.

            http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=56642

            Some other cruising news to tell you about….”Vacations To Go’s” Alex Fox reports in his newsletter that  Princess’ “Royal Princess” is back in service after experiencing a fire while on a 12-day cruise of the Mediterranean on June 18.  No one was injured, but it must have been scary.

            The QE2 which was supposed to be permanently docked in Dubai may now in fact move to South Africa. They may use it as a floating hotel for next years World Cup soccer. Britain’s “Financial Times” says that South Africa may dock it in Cape Town and make it a luxury hotel there instead. 

            And VTG reports as well that Carnival has launched a program in Miami that lets passengers check themselves in at self-service kiosks.  

            Another new ship enters the water in August when the Celebrity Equinox begins a ten day sailing out of London. By the way, Cruise news daily has a video of the ship arriving in England for some pre cruise celebrations.

            http://cnd-cruiseblogger.blogspot.com/

             If you have any cruise information you’d like to share be sure to send it to me at john.hinnen@rci.rogers.com or you can send to me on Twitter.