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Norwegian Cruise Line Announces Brand-New Marketing Solution for Travel Partners

  • March 19, 2024

Norwegian Connect

Norwegian Cruise Line has announced the the debut of NCL Connect, a co-branding, marketing solution that boosts the sales and marketing efforts of the travel partner community, while delivering what it said was an unrivaled client experience, according to a statement.

“As we remain committed to being the easiest cruise line to do business with, and as part of our longstanding Partners First philosophy, we are thrilled to be offering this exciting, new platform for our travel partners,” said John Chernesky, senior vice president of North America Sales. “NCL Connect is another step in the right direction to our commitment, and I look forward to seeing our travel partner community become more engaged with the Brand, while simultaneously growing their businesses.”

The company said that NCL Connect is a tightly integrated marketing solution where travel partners can instantaneously co-brand digital content experiences pre-designed with the knowledge and expertise of the Company’s in-house marketing team that offers their clients a look into cruising with Norwegian Cruise Line.

It offers travel partners the opportunity to leverage a co-branded website complete with NCL sailings for clients to explore while driving leads directly to the travel advisor. The new product complements NCL’s robust Marketing Headquarters with 800+ ready-to-use or customizable assets such as videos, flyers and more. NCL Connect offers an extra level of marketing support available to travel advisors that provides instant, personalized co-branded content in just one click and easily shareable via all social media, email, and other marketing media channels. Additional digital experiences will launch throughout the year on an ongoing basis.

“The team at NCL shares our vision for the future of trade marketing: make it personal, make it impactful, and most importantly, make it easy for travel advisors,” said Jennifer Raezer, co-founder and CMO of Approach Guides. “NCL is the first contemporary cruise line to deploy our solution, bringing the full weight of its in-house marketing expertise and technology to support the advisor’s business. I know advisors are going to love it.”

NCL Connect is powered by technology from Approach Guides.

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How Does a Mega Cruise Ship Source, Store, and Prepare All That Food?

By Sean O'Neill

Image may contain Furniture Chair Room Ballroom Indoors Restaurant and Interior Design

Imagine you supervise the culinary logistics of a mega-cruise ship. Say it's Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas, which feeds up to 5,400 passengers multiple times a day at 26 venues, ranging from a Starbucks to upscale eatery Chef's Table. Picture yourself overseeing portside food inspectors, shipboard bread bakers, and 1,200 other workers dedicated to passengers' gastronomic wishes.

It's a mind-bending job, right? The mere thought of it might make an ordinary mortal want to go on a carbo-loading, comfort-food binge to cope. Yet as many cruise lines supersize their ships, they must also scale up their provisioning operations to the same deftness as would be required to supply a battleship during wartime.

So we checked in with the major cruise lines for the 411 on what happens behind the scenes on a romantic Caribbean jaunt. Here's what we dug up:

"Every voyage, it’s show time, like Broadway," says Cyrus Marfatia, vice president of culinary and dining for Carnival Cruise Lines and the man who directs the company's ongoing production, so to speak. On the 2,974-passenger Carnival Freedom, for instance, it takes 150 workers in kitchens to parlay 240 pallets' worth of food into thousands of meals worthy of fine restaurants.

Cunard spokesperson Jackie Chase makes a similar point by using the famous liner Queen Mary 2 as an example. She describes the management of the vessel's typical "turnaround day" in port as comparable to "checking out the entire Plaza Hotel in New York after breakfast, having the entire kitchen re-stocked during the morning (with up to 20 trucks offloading goods at the hotel), changing every bed linen and towel, checking in the entire hotel during the afternoon, and holding a state banquet in the evening." In real life, no hotel does anything close to what cruise lines like Cunard do week in and week out.

Image may contain Food Lunch Meal Pork and Culinary

Rack of lamb, Queens Grill on the Queen Mary 2

Predicting passenger tastes is the first challenge. Companies analyze guests' dining patterns to suss out trends and plan menus. Trends can vary by season, route, and type of passenger. Case in point: When Europeans outnumber Americans on a Cunard ship, lighter wines such as Riesling and pinot noir are ordered more often than bolder varietals, such as Shiraz and Chardonnay, which tend to be favored by many of us Yanks.

The next hurdle is to transfer supplies from pier to ship. Exhibit A: Disney's 2,700-passenger Magic loads up 3,125 gallons of soda, 10,000 pounds of chicken, and 71,500 eggs for an average weeklong sailing. (Holy Bieber, that's a lot of grub!)

The saga starts before dawn, when workers meet quayside to inspect pallets of food for quality, such as checking produce for freshness. Time is of the essence, says Frank Weber, vice president for food and beverage operations for Royal Caribbean. "We start loading around 7 a.m. in the morning, so we have until 3:30 p.m. to send something back to our produce supplier, like a pallet of tomatoes, and to get a replacement a little later in the afternoon."

Longshoremen then load supplies into the hull. In the case of Royal Caribbean, the food is typically transferred from wooden pallets to metal trays, which can be more easily cleaned, to prevent ship contamination by anything that might have been on the wood. For similar reasons, other packaging, such as cardboard, is incinerated.

Once on the ship, supplies are shuttled to dozens of storehouses set to various temperatures. On Cunard's QM2, a storeroom for ice cream is set at minus-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, while a separate room holds meat at a more appropriate temperature.

Storage, preparation, and cooking are done in separate rooms to prevent cross-contamination. For instance, commissary kitchens customarily handle food preparation, such as slicing tomatoes, cubing melons, and marinating slices of beef. That way, no prep work happens in the kitchen.

Technology assures smooth sailing by alerting crewmembers to how many passengers are grabbing a bite. Royal Caribbean, for instance, has head-counting cameras in the ceilings of its main dining areas that tally when and where passengers gravitate, providing data that can be used to anticipate peak serving times.

Ships keep menus simple (for instance, offering a single main version each of meat, poultry, and seafood) to enable their cooks to prepare food to order and serve it at the proper temperatures. (Of course, some ships have a few specialist venues onboard that provide more varied menus, but they serve a small, subset of passengers and are the exception to the general rule.)

Simplified menus allow chefs to synchronize meal creation with the needs of diners. "We don't pre-cook the steaks and keep them in a warmer as you would in a typical hotel banquet operation," says Weber of Royal Caribbean, describing a method that's common to better cruise lines. "And we don't plate food until the waiter is on the path to deliver it."

Stockpiling enough reserve supplies for a surprise spike in demand is also standard practice. Storerooms typically house a day or two's extra provisions, ensuring that plenty of spare ingredients will be on hand. During hurricane season, ships store even heftier hoards of culinary supplies. Banking extra supplies is also the norm for ships on routes that spend less time than usual in port.

Occasionally, there are rare circumstances when kitchens do, in fact, run out of individual random ingredients, such as wasabi. When that happens, as soon as a ship berths at a port, crewmembers race down the gangway and hit the local markets to source what's missing.

Photographs courtesy of Royal Caribbean and Cunard Lines

More on cruising:

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The concept of the cruise supply chain and its characteristics: an empirical study of China's cruise industry

Maritime Business Review

ISSN : 2397-3757

Article publication date: 10 June 2022

Issue publication date: 9 September 2022

The cruise industry has witnessed steady growth, with passenger volume increasing from 17.8 million in 2009 to 30 million in 2019. In the context of global competition and an uncertain business environment, competition in business has changed dramatically from battles of “firm versus firm” to “supply chain versus supply chain”. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to understand the cruise industry from a chain perspective, which has not drawn widespread research attention.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper brings together the insights, opinions, concepts and frameworks from a literature review of different disciplines (maritime shipping, tourism management, logistics management, operations management and supply chain management) and analysis results from 22 semi-structured interviews to make an early attempt to conceptualise the cruise supply chain (CSC).

The cruise supply chain is elaborated on the process, the role of each entity and its characteristics by comparing with the maritime supply chain and tourism supply chain. Based on the understanding of the CSC, two specific characteristics of the Chinese CSC are examined, which need further investigation.

Originality/value

The CSC is articulated with detailed processes and characteristics based on the literature review and empirical study. The findings of this paper not only advance the knowledge of the supply chain in the cruise industry but also highlight the importance of further research on the CSC.

  • Cruise supply chain
  • Characteristics
  • Semi-structured interviews
  • Supply chain management

Zhou, J. , (Peggy) Chen, S.-L. and Shi, W.(W). (2022), "The concept of the cruise supply chain and its characteristics: an empirical study of China's cruise industry", Maritime Business Review , Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 196-221. https://doi.org/10.1108/MABR-06-2021-0046

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Pacific Star Group Education Foundation

1. Introduction

Since the late 1960s, the cruise industry has witnessed a constant growth ( Pallis, 2015 ). Even during the 2008 global financial crisis and the unfortunate 2012 Costa Concordia accident, the number of cruise passengers increased ( Cruise Lines International Association, 2020 ). The cruise industry contributes to the global economy by generating significant economic revenues and employment opportunities. For example, in 2019, cruising sustained over US$154 billion in total output worldwide, with 29.7 million passengers taking cruises and creating 1.16 million jobs ( Cruise Lines International Association, 2021 ).

It has been widely recognised that individual businesses no longer compete as solely autonomous entities but as supply chains (SCs) ( Lambert et al ., 1998 ; Ketchen and Giunipero, 2004 ; Ketchen and Hult, 2007 ). Any disruption in an organisation may interrupt the whole SC operations ( Scheibe and Blackhurst, 2018 ), which also suits the cruise industry. However, the SC view of cruise operation and management has not received much attention in the cruise industry. The unique characteristics of cruise shipping, including narrow time windows, repositioning cruises, global sourcing for multiple suppliers onboard and inland, high standard of service quality and customer satisfaction, as well as greater exposure to global uncertainty, necessitate introducing the concept of the SC to the cruise industry. Hence, a better understanding of the concept of a cruise supply chain (CSC) is imperative for a systematic view of managing the cruise business in an uncertain environment. In particular, the cruise industry is currently disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic severely. These motivate us to investigate the concept of the CSC and its characteristics.

By incorporating the literature and empirical results, this paper contributes to the conceptualisation of the CSC by elaborating its entities, detailed processes and activities, and characteristics. In addition, this paper advances the knowledge of the SC in the cruise industry by comparing the CSC with the maritime supply chain (MSC) and the tourism supply chain (TSC). This paper is beneficial to researchers and practitioners in the cruise industry to understand how the CSC works, the constituents and definition of the CSC and the differences between the CSC and the MSC and the TSC.

How is the CSC articulated?

What are the characteristics of the CSC compared with the MSC and the TSC?

2. Literature review of the CSC

Although great efforts have been made to examine the literature on cruise shipping, most of the studies focus on economic and policy issues ( Vayá et al. , 2018 ; Wang et al ., 2020 ), managing cruise services ( Chua et al. , 2015 ; Chiou et al ., 2021 ; Yuen et al. , 2021 ), illness and disease analysis ( Li et al ., 2021 ), and itinerary planning ( Chen and Nijkamp, 2018 ; Guo et al. , 2021 ). The literature review reveals that the extant studies were mainly undertaken from the perspective of cruise lines, with limited research from an SC perspective identified by Vaggelas and Lagoudis (2010) , Diakomihalis and Stefanidaki (2011) , Tsourakis (2012) , and Qu et al . (2020) .

As a pioneering work of the CSC, Veronneau and Roy (2009) defined the supply chain management (SCM) of a cruise ship as “the timely coordination of supply in anticipation of a demand in support to service delivery excellence” ( Veronneau and Roy, 2009 , p. 135). Also, they identified typical entities in the CSC, including port agents, suppliers' distribution centres, cruise corporations' distribution centres and cruise lines. Types of cruise ship suppliers were identified and classified by Veronneau et al . (2015) , and major CSC entities were suggested by Vaggelas and Lagoudis (2010) . Tsourakis (2012) elaborated on the cruise SCM with an emphasis on the upstream SC ending in the cruise companies and highlighted the responsibilities and roles of different entities, processes and operations in the CSC, including placing an order, procurement, storage, consolidation, transportation, loading and onboard activities. Chu and Hsu (2021) developed a CSC consisting of a cruise line, intermediaries and customers. Though the CSC was simple, covering only three entities and modified from the TSC, their study underlined the significance of travel agencies as an intermediary in the CSC. Rodrigue and Wang (2020) depicted the CSC from suppliers to a cruise ship with information flow and physical flow. Qu et al . (2020) built a conceptual framework of a simplified CSC, covering three entities only, suppliers, a cruise company and passengers. However, the concept of the CSC in both studies was not validated by an empirical study. Moreover, they focussed on the procurement process of cruise ships but lacked an investigation into other processes associated with providing services in the CSC.

A close inspection of these studies indicates that they focus mainly on a particular part of the CSC or some specific CSC processes, lacking a holistic view of the CSC. For example, Veronneau and Roy (2009) emphasised the operational replenishment only from suppliers to a cruise ship. Tsourakis (2012) focused on the upstream CSC, especially for the food and beverage outsourcing strategy. Veronneau et al. (2015) only examined the relationships between a major cruise line corporation and its suppliers in the CSC. Rodrigue and Wang (2020) concentrated on the procurement of supplies in the CSC. Chu and Hsu (2021) studied the relationship between cruise lines and travel agencies in the CSC. Table 1 summarises the limitations and contributions of the existing literature. The research gap motivates the authors to articulate the CSC based on literature review and an empirical study, aiming at exploring a comprehensive CSC with entities, processes and activities, and interactions between entities. The results of this study help researchers and practitioners obtain a better understanding of the CSC.

3. Research methodology

After the literature review, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain valuable perspectives from key stakeholders on the concept of the CSC. The scarcity of existing studies related to the concept of the CSC necessitates acquiring first-hand data and valuable viewpoints from stakeholders directly for an exploratory study. Furthermore, semi-structured telephone interviews enable the authors to collect in-depth information with the advantages of cost effectiveness and time efficiency ( Block and Erskine, 2012 ). Therefore, this research chose qualitative semi-structured telephone interviews for data collection.

China has been the main driver of cruise passenger growth in Asia for the last few years ( Cruise Lines International Association, 2015 ; Sun et al. , 2019b ). Though the Chinese cruise market is developing rapidly, much of the cruising related research is centred on European countries and the Western hemisphere, with limited research focussing on an empirical study in China ( Sun et al ., 2014 ; Hung et al. , 2019 ). Therefore, this research chose China for an empirical study and provided a deep understanding of the Chinese CSC.

The semi-structured interview questions include three demographic questions and three questions related to the process, roles and functions of entities, and the characteristics of the CSC ( Table 2 ).

A total of 22 telephone interviews with key stakeholders in the CSC (including cruise lines, cruise port operators, the pilot station, the maritime authority, travel agencies, cruise service companies, cruise port agents and the cruise industry association) were conducted. Most interviewees were senior managers who possessed more than five years’ experience ( Table 3 ). These present that these interviewees are likely to produce reliable results in the data collected. The interviews were noted and recorded with participants' prior consents and permissions, then transcribed and analysed by NVivo 12.

The data were analysed using a deductive qualitative content analysis ( Elo and Kyngäs, 2008 ), which is suitable for an exploratory work with limited knowledge (the concept of the CSC) ( Vaismoradi et al . , 2013 ). This approach enables the authors to guide the interviews by deriving and developing a structured matrix from the SC concept ( Hewitt, 1994 ; Piboonrungroj, 2012 ). Under this matrix, information associated with three categories (processes, roles and functions of entities, and characteristics of the CSC) can be obtained, such as how the SC entities run their business with other partners in the CSC. Furthermore, many participants may only be familiar with the services, processes and roles of entities connected to them. Thus, knowledge about the CSC was gained by combining the qualitative data from different participants, which enables the authors to propose the concept of the entire CSC. The detail of this procedure is shown in Appendix .

4. The concept of the CSC

4.1 definition of the csc and its components.

As a hybrid concept, the CSC shares some differences and similarities with the MSC and the TSC ( Figure 2 ). A typical MSC starts from shippers, through freight forwarders, shipping companies, ports and land transport operators, to consignees. A typical TSC starts from Tier 2 suppliers (e.g. food suppliers and drink suppliers) and Tier 1 suppliers (e.g. accommodation suppliers and transportation suppliers), through travel agencies/tour operators, to customers.

Referring to the existing literature on cruise studies with findings of the semi-structured interviews, this research develops the CSC shown in Figure 3 that presents major entities, processes and information, financial, physical and service flows.

The information and financial flows start from passengers booking cruises and shore excursions after obtaining information about cruise products. Passengers generate booking demand directly via the cruise lines' websites or indirectly with travel agencies or tour operators. Subsequently, cruise lines, travel agencies or tour operators gather and quickly respond to this booking information to request service information on transport, accommodation, catering, recreation etc. These SC entities, with other service providers, share and communicate information to integrate the whole procedure. Cruise lines consolidate service and product information to suppliers, vendors, cruise port operators and logistics providers to arrange schedules and facilities for cruises. Travel agencies or tour operators may also contact transport companies or tourist attractions for shore excursions. After cruising, passengers provide feedback on the cruise experience, which can be part of decision-making information (e.g. on the improvement of future shore excursion activities) for some SC entities such as cruise lines and port operators. Through the SC, the value of information is added.

Distribution service

The distribution service starts with cruise lines placing an order to suppliers or vendors. Confirmed by interviews, there are six kinds of suppliers in the CSC, including hotel, food and beverage, technical, corporate, concessionaires' products and fuel suppliers ( Tsourakis, 2012 ; Veronneau et al ., 2015 ). Each kind of supplier may provide their products through different entities. For example, the high-value and essential products (such as spare engine parts) are directly shipped from suppliers to cruise ships via port agents ( Tsourakis, 2012 ) rather than through distribution centres ( Figure 3 ). Although the CSC involves both suppliers from MSCs and TSCs, the flexibility and reliability of suppliers are highly valued in the CSC to meet urgent and timely SC requests ( Veronneau et al ., 2015) . More specifically, the CSC suppliers are required to have buffer inventory and quantity-flexible contracts that are generally signed between cruise lines and suppliers, because cruise lines often revise their orders until calling at the loading port ( Rodrigue and Wang, 2020 ).

Vendors contact suppliers and cruise lines to provide supplies as per request. As explained by an interviewee from a cruise line, vendors provide cruise lines with the latest products either from their own productions or from the local market and vendors source new or specific products as per determined by cruise lines' brand promise and promotional execution.

Containers of lobsters are shipped from Chile; containers of chicken are shipped from Argentina; containers of crabs are shipped from Russia. All these goods are imported and stored in the regional distribution centre. After confirming the purchase order placed by one ship, a container packed with a mix of these goods (of the same shipping condition) is delivered to the ship as requested.

As revealed from the interviews, direct shipment from suppliers in the local market in China consists of four types of products, food and beverage, hotel supplies, corporate or office supplies, and spare parts. After cruise lines initiate a procurement process, local suppliers or vendors send their products to the cruise port, which bypasses the distribution centres of cruise lines ( Figure 3 ).

For instance, M ship departs from Japan, and N ship departs from Southeast Asia. As both ships will call at Hong Kong, N ship may ask M ship to deliver some Japanese sake and give M ship some Singapore Bak kut teh.

This process is popular due to timesaving without customs clearance. After being approved by headquarters of cruise lines, the “ship-to-ship” process is usually billed by cash.

As revealed from the interviews, port agents are primarily responsible for husbanding and logistics services for cruise ships and passengers. They usually assist cruise ships to book the berth, arrange the quarantine inspection, immigration inspection, and customs clearance, and help coordinate and organise the schedule for the ship getting in and out of port, bunkering, freshwater and shore-side power service. In addition to port agents, the interview results identified a unique business entity called supply agent in China. As stated by an interviewee, supply agents own a special licence issued by the Chinese government, allowing them to transport goods onboard cruise ship in China. From the interviews, the distinction between port agents and supply agents is that port agents deal with the issues of cruise passengers and cruise ships, while supply agents concentrate on the issues related to products.

Port service

Unlike a cargo port in the MSC that places value on the efficiency of handling cargos and the berthing capacity of terminals ( Ugboma et al . , 2006 ), a cruise port values the connectivity of different forms of passenger transfer service, the efficiency of passenger clearance procedures and the capability of providing a pleasing environment for cruise passengers ( Marti, 1990 ; Sun et al. , 2019 ; Papachristou et al ., 2020 ; Tseng and Yip, 2021 ). Particularly, cruise homeports need to be able to handle thousands of embarkation and disembarkation passengers from around the world, and cruise ports of call need to be able to convey disembarkation passengers taking shore excursions by reliable and convenient local transportation systems. As a result, the distance from a cruise port to a city downtown or tourist attractions ( Castillo-Manzano et al ., 2014 ) and the convenience of transportation for passengers gathering and distributing are the most important factors for cruise lines' decisions on both a homeport ( Lekakou et al . , 2009 ) and a port of call ( Wang et al. , 2014 ); thus, these factors are of importance to generate economic activities for cruise destinations. Another difference in port services between the CSC and the MSC lies in the roles of ports. That is, a cruise port not only acts as a transhipment hub but also provides retail and entertainment services, which have a significant impact on a cruise line's decision on itineraries ( Vaggelas and Lagoudis, 2010 ). In addition, unlike many MSCs (e.g. bulk shipping), advance bookings play a predominant role in the CSC. Thus, much of the operations information (e.g. schedule, plan, number of ships and itinerary) can be pre-determined ahead of time. As stated by Silva (2021) , cruise ship information is available three years in advance; its future location, itineraries and even onboard menus are planned in advance. Accordingly, many problems in MSCs, i.e. insufficient ship berths or merchant ships queuing to dock at the port, would be less concerning to the CSC.

Onboard and shore service

In comparison to MSCs, a series of onboard activities and services (e.g. shows, bars, hotel accommodation, art auction and catering) are provided by cruise lines in the CSC. The cruise ship is not only a form of transport but the destination itself ( Wood, 2004 ). As revealed from the interviews, cruise passengers spend most of their time onboard cruise ships, and cruise lines earn most from onboard activities such as gambling, drinking, and shopping. By enhancing opportunities for onboard revenue, cruise lines can even compete directly with land-based operators ( Thomas, 2015 ), and this is regarded as one of the secrets of the cruise industry's success ( Vogel, 2009 ). Cruise staff members can directly deliver these services to passengers, which means that cruise lines play a predominant role in the success of the CSC.

Shore excursions represent another significant source of income for cruise lines and an essential section of itinerary attractiveness ( Johnson, 2006 ; Navarro-Ruiz et al ., 2019 ). Cruise passengers only have 6–8 h for onshore activities, but they place exceptional value on the services and arrangements related to shore excursions ( Tseng and Yip, 2021 ). Though shore service is important for the holistic cruise experience ( Navarro-Ruiz et al ., 2019 ), the problem is that complaints about the poor quality of shore excursions are common ( Esteve-Perez and Garcia-Sanchez, 2015 ). To improve passengers' satisfaction, CSC players may work together to diversify and enhance cruise onshore tourism programs ( Wang et al. , 2014 ; Tseng and Yip, 2021 ) and provide sufficient time for sightseeing ( Sun et al. , 2019 ).

Compared to MSCs, the interaction phase of the relationship between the service providers (e.g. cruise lines) and passengers is vital in the supply and delivery of services in the CSC. The perceived service is often different from the received service for cruise passengers in the CSC. Therefore, the quality of output (delivered service) in the CSC is sometimes directly linked to passengers' participation (e.g. passengers' feedback).

An analysis of the CSC

A network of entities that engage in three stages of the process (distribution service, port service and onboard and shore service) through the supply of cruise products, financial and information services to the delivery of these services to cruise passengers.

A simplified CSC is depicted in Figure 5 . The upstream CSC includes two groups of suppliers, suppliers for cruise ship operations and suppliers for passengers' accommodation, catering, recreation etc.

Cruise lines are focal firms in the CSC. They send requests to vendors or suppliers for replenishment related to passenger consumption and ship operations. Cruise lines provide accommodation, catering, shopping and recreation aboard, and design and arrange cruise products to meet personalised demands of passengers gathered by travel agencies or tour operators. They draw support from cruise ports to meet the requirement of passengers' embarkation and disembarkation, berthing, bunking, replenishment etc. Cruise lines also connect with cruise destinations, and passengers generate demand and economic contribution by shore excursions for local tourist attractions, local restaurants, traffic and others.

As focal firms, cruise lines should make good use of their predominant role in the CSC. Although cruise destinations and cruise ports are acquainted with local resources (e.g. scenic spot operation conditions), facilities and local traffic systems, they rely heavily on cruise lines to bring passengers. Therefore, cruise lines may aid destination areas and ports to provide suitable services by sharing the latest cruise market information and their passengers' profiles.

4.2 Characteristics of the CSC

Demand-driven and supply-driven

The demand-driven characteristic widely exists in many SCs, e.g. make-to-order SCs and make-to-stock SCs. Like most industries, the demand-driven characteristic exists in the CSC, primarily associated with cruise supplies. The physical and service flow for cruise supplies (e.g. food and beverage) is activated by predicted or actual demands. As revealed from the interviews, the cruise shipboard team requests supplies of food and beverage based on the actual consumption and predicted stockout. This demand information is then sent via the cruise shore office to vendors or suppliers for production and package. This is a typical demand-driven phenomenon in the CSC, as widely witnessed in other SCs.

This study used the theory of Hull (2005) to explain the supply-driven characteristic of the CSC from four perspectives, product characteristics, resilience, a reverse bullwhip effect and matching supply and demand through a pricing mechanism.

First, cruise products are a type of perishable service, i.e. the service provided onboard and onshore in the CSC cannot be stored for future use ( Hauser and Truong, 2012 ). On the sailing date, all unsold cruise cabins “perish”. This perishability results from time constraints, product characteristics and deliverability driven by cruise lines and travel agencies to fill the cabins shortly before sailing to avoid unsold cruise cabins.

Second, business resilience within the CSC is managed by covering multiple cruise markets and global deployment, e.g. the Caribbean, Eastern Mediterranean and Asian markets. These multiple markets enable the CSC to have alternative markets to assure its supply continues at full operation rates if demand disappoints. As defined by Hull (2005) , when demand falls, a resilient supply-driven chain would shift flows to other markets to maximise profits instead of adjusting operation rates. A classic example can be seen from the cruise ship Norwegian Joy that pulled out of China in 2018. As revealed by an interviewee, although the ship was specially built for China, Norwegian Cruise Line still moved it to America as they believed Alaska was a better market. Meanwhile, unlike other SCs, the CSC operates global deployment to ensure the success of a season. Like many other tourism products, cruise products have seasonality issues by nature. However, cruise lines use the re-positioning itineraries strategy to avoid off-seasons; for example, cruise lines deploy ships to the Northern Hemisphere in the summer peak season while moving ships to the Caribbean during winter.

There are many small and medium-sized travel agents in the current cruise market in China. When the market condition is challenging, they may force the purchaser (the primary travel agency or wholesaler) [to lower the price]. For instance, we [as a wholesaler] purchased the cabin [from cruise lines] at a price of ¥3000. Typically speaking, we may sell [the ticket] at ¥3100 or ¥3200. However, someone [small and medium-sized agents] would tell you that now they have 200 customers willing to cruise, and those customers only would like to pay ¥2500. Do you want to sell it to us [at ¥2500] or not? Ironically, customers may also pay ¥3000 for the tickets.

The fear of unsold cruise cabins emphasises supply (maintaining flow) instead of demand (customer response). In other words, this fear of demand limitation starts from the upstream CSC instead of from customers, which differs from many SCs. It amplifies the power of information, which in turn empowers those entities which use this information to extract price concessions.

Globalisation

The CSC exhibits the characteristic of globalisation. Globalisation is a vision of one world unit ( Luthans and Doh, 2018 ), and the CSC is an excellent example of this vision. Thousands of passengers stay on a cruise ship, with everything from shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, bars, gyms and casinos. A cruise ship is no longer seen as a means of transport but as a floating resort or even a floating country. It could be regarded as a small world.

Also, Wood (2006) used “deterritorialised destination” to evidence this globalisation characteristic. The cruise ship is a tourist destination per se , not to mention the destinations that each cruise port calls. For the CSC, the world is a global destination, as most regions are also included on cruise itineraries ( Perucic, 2007 ). Cruise lines geographically re-position vessels to exploit complementarity between different destinations ( Charlier and McCalla, 2006 ). The re-positioning ability enables the CSC to enter new markets and exit saturated markets with incredible speed and minimum cost, which is dreamt of in many TSCs as infrastructure investments are primarily huge and fixed ( Veronneau and Roy, 2009 ).

Brazilian beef is of high quality, so we import Brazilian beef. Australian milk is the best, so we import Australian milk. We do the cruise business globally, from procurement, delivery, to payment.

A common phenomenon of a CSC is that the cruise ship is built in Europe, with its company headquartered in America, registered in Panama, crewed by citizens of various countries, cruising that generally follows the sun, and makes communication worldwide. To illustrate, firstly, unlike merchant ships, cruise ships can only be built in three to four European cruise shipyards ( Statista, 2016 ). Secondly, the cruise industry is more sensitive to labour conditions compared to cargo shipping. Compared with the shipping industry, the Flag of Convenience is much more pronounced in the cruise sector. Despite the predominance of US-headquartered lines in the Caribbean, not a single large cruise ship operating in the Caribbean flies the US flag ( Wood, 2000 ). Perucic (2007) agreed that there was a remarkable disproportion between national flag and flags of convenience: the USA has only three cruise ships under its own flag. Thirdly, unlike other ships, crews of a cruise ship could be from up to 50 countries, representing a “mini-United Nations”. A cruise ship can be easy with a capacity of 4,000 passengers and 1,500 crews from various countries. Such a multi-national atmosphere is often marketed as a kind of cruise experience ( Perucic, 2007 ) but is rare in MSCs or TSCs. As a result, the CSC involves supplying a broad range of products and services for different passengers from different countries, creating an international environment onboard and onshore.

Globalisation in the CSC also leads to the internationalisation of ownership. The pace of mergers and acquisitions in the CSC moves much faster compared to MSCs or TSCs. Transnational corporations can cover almost all cruise regions, which are rarely witnessed in other SCs. These amalgamations in the cruise sector decrease the territorial links to their countries of origin ( Wood, 2000 ). This proves globalisation, as culture, social life and economic activity, is no longer rooted primarily in the physical geography of a place.

The cruise business derives from transporting goods and accommodating passengers. It includes running duty-free stores, casinos, and even owning private islands.
The variety of products in the CSC is extensive, and the capital spent on cruise supplies is excessive.

The size of ships is steadily increasing, and the consumption of onboard services has become more diversified ( Rodrigue and Wang, 2020 ). Tons of food and beverage are stocked aboard to keep thousands of cruisers constantly supplied, and storerooms aboard typically reserve a day or two's additional provisions to ensure that there will always be a sufficient margin on hand. Even purchasing tenderloin can be up to three million pounds ( Veronneau and Roy, 2009 ). The complexity exists not only in the large economy of scale, but also in the requirement of provisions. A cruise ship needs to continually purchase tons of products with the same specification; after all, a cruise ship requires uniformity of supplies with high-quality control and food safety. This complexity in procurement is more significant than MSCs or TSCs.

The complexity in handling wastes can be seen as another viewpoint to show the complexity of the CSC. A medium-size cruise ship with 3,600 passengers can generate 2,358 m 3 of greywater and treated sewage, 84 m 3 of oily waste and 266 m 3 of solid waste weekly ( Kotrikla et al . , 2021 ). Even though cruise ships are less than 1% of the world merchant fleet, they produce 25% of waste produced by merchant ships ( Butt, 2007 ). The management of these wastes is far more complex, and cruise port reception facilities should be able to handle all these waste types ( Slišković et al. , 2018 ).

Less flexibility

As revealed from the interviews, less flexibility can be explained from two perspectives. First, the time frame for replenishing cruise supplies and cruise ship schedules for the CSC is less flexible, given the fixed itinerary and short turnaround window ( Qu et al . , 2020 ). In each port, cruise ships only have 4–10 h of loading time. Given loading activities can involve more than 100 different stakeholders ( Ros, 2019 ), late arrival at ports reduces the time available for provisioning and may cause dissatisfaction amongst the shore-going passengers ( Hauser and Truong, 2012 ). One interviewee agreed with this characteristic for replenishing cruise supplies and commented that space limitations around ports, as well in loading bay areas only allow specific time frames for each vendor or forwarder to deliver their products. Any delay may cause spoilage, jammed loading areas or even delay of a ship.

A cruise ship is self-contained once sailing out; if we do not have what we want, we may never ever have it until the next port (in some cases, we might only have it in certain ports).
For supplies, we basically place an order in containers. It takes 90–120 days from ordering to receiving these containers of products. Forgetting to order means you would not have these products in the following 90 days. Then you have to pay an extra US$5000–10000 for the express service (e.g. airlifting).

The long booking window in terms of procurement of the CSC is unparallelled to MSCs or TSCs. As for both MSCs and TSCs, supplies would not have to be primarily delivered from a centralised hub, while cruise ship procurement is much more stringent ( Zhang et al ., 2009 ).

Authorisation is needed for storage as most of the storage areas are in either port areas or bonded areas. Moreover, these places usually have limited access requiring a pre-application process. Supplies cannot just change if there is any wrong or missing order.

Table 4 presents the commonalities and differences among the three SCs, which provide a better understanding of the CSC.

5. Specific characteristics in the Chinese CSC

5.1 the complicated procedure of cruise supplies transhipment.

There is one container of beef, and three ships are waiting for the beef. The reason why a cruise line still prefers shipping the beef to Japan or South Korea instead of China for replenishment is that once this container is opened, it is regarded as an import business in China. This means that the import procedure should be followed including quarantine inspection [and customs clearance] for the beef that requires extra time. Subsequently, the beef in this container has to be separated into three units [for three cruise ships]. But when these three units are delivered aboard, it is regarded as an export business; thus, an export procedure needs to comply with.

Although China also launched a pilot scheme in Xiamen for bonded supplies to international cruise ships in 2018, as an interviewee indicated, this is only a single case and this scheme has not been expanded around the country. The procedures are still complex for cruise lines.

5.2 The wholesale model

As explained previously, cruise lines are focal firms in the CSC. However, the leading role of a cruise line is exceptionally weak in China because of the so-called wholesale model or charter model. This model means that cruise lines charter their ships' cabins to one to several travel agencies. Then, travel agencies sell the cabins directly to customers, which bypass cruise lines. In most parts of the world, cruise voyages are sold by travel agencies on commission or direct sales from cruise lines' websites. However, in China, more than 90% of cruise voyages are distributed through chartering ( Sun and Ni, 2018 ; Chu and Hsu, 2021 ).

Cruise lines are unable to touch customers, especially in the early years. From customers' embarkation to disembarkation, the whole process is handled by travel agencies.
Take the sales information as an example, we lose control of customers, because this information is controlled by travel agencies. We do not know the customers' profiles. We even do not know how many tickets were sold on each day before sailing. Besides, we do not know at what price did the customers buy these tickets.

Moreover, passengers cannot receive sufficient information (e.g. price information) from cruise lines in China but choose the cheapest cruise products offered by travel agencies in the market, which accelerates the price war in China.

The price war caused by the wholesaler model lowers the quality of products and services in China. Cruise lines sign contracts with travel agencies for securing the cabins months ago before sailing. As revealed from the interviews, either these contracts are non-refundable, or travel agencies have to pay a fine if they fail to meet the pre-determined requirement. As a result, travel agencies frequently reduce the price of cruise products, aiming to sell out their booked cabins as many as possible. An extremely low cruise fare may even reach US$ 7 per person per day ( Chu and Hsu, 2021 ). With such a low price for a cruise ticket in China, food and service quality would be decreasing. This low-price competition destroys high-end features of cruise products and leads to a disappointing experience ( Lv et al . , 2018 ).

Royal Caribbean International opens a few stores on land, specialising in selling their cruise products to customers directly. It devotes every effort to direct selling.

Furthermore, travel agencies may return to the real intermediate role in the CSC – merely assisting cruise lines to sell tickets instead of gaining too much market power. Meanwhile, cruise lines may take the leading position back to the roles of focal firms in the CSC – determining the price and the market rules.

6. Conclusion and implications

Through reviewing the existing literature and conducting an empirical study in China, this research conceptualises the CSC by examining its key entities, processes, activities and characteristics with a comparison with MSCs and TSCs in the discussion and provides a better understanding of the CSC. Two specific characteristics faced by the CSC in China are also identified, which need further investigation.

The findings of this research have several managerial and academic implications. This research is a starting point for looking at the cruise industry from an SC perspective. It is beneficial to practitioners in the cruise industry to better understand the concept of the CSC. By comparing the CSC with MSCs and TSCs, this research draws interest to practitioners to view a CSC not only from the perspective of the cruise industry but also from tourism and transport.

The academic implications of this research lie in three aspects. First, as supply-driven characteristic is rarely studied in the SC literature, future research could investigate the properties of supply-driven chains. Apart from four perspectives (i.e. product characteristics, resilience, a reverse bullwhip effect, and matching supply and demand through a pricing mechanism) proposed in Hull (2005) , it is necessary to examine whether secrecy can be the additional property of a supply-driven chain. Although information sharing is deemed as a common SCM strategy, secrecy is common in the CSC. For example, in the aforementioned improper relationship between primary and secondary travel agencies, primary travel agencies may keep the secrecy of sales information instead of sharing it with other SC entities (e.g. secondary travel agencies) to avoid this issue. Thus, researchers could investigate the use of secrecy in supply-driven chains. On the other hand, previous studies have identified that supply saturation, as opposed to demand saturation, can restrict the development of a CSC ( Rodrigue and Notteboom, 2013 ). As evidenced, creating more ship capacity is one of the key factors to increase the number of cruise passengers, and cruise business growth is limited more by capacity than demand ( Rodrigue and Notteboom, 2013 ; Micallef, 2018 ). As a result, further research may validate whether supply saturation could be regarded as an additional proposition of supply-driven chains, which may enrich the understanding of supply-driven chains.

Second, there is an inconsistent view on demand uncertainty of the CSC between literature and the finding of the empirical study. Scholars such as Papathanassis et al . (2012) and Tsourakis (2012) argued that demand uncertainty is a unique characteristic, while interviewees disagreed. Most processes of the CSC need to be pre-scheduled. The total number of passengers is acknowledged weeks ahead because the passenger list needs to be inspected by the immigration office in advance. The itinerary, as well as the port of call, is pre-set, and the cruise ship berth is usually booked half a year ahead. Also, the maximum number of expected passengers is limited by the ship capacity. The demand could be expected as many processes are determined in advance; thus, the demand uncertainty is a characteristic of the CSC that remains to be discussed.

Third, as a variety of risks disrupt the CSC severely (e.g. COVID-19), future research could focus on applying risk management in the CSC, for instance, through an empirical study or a quantitative method to evaluate significant risks in the cruise industry from an SC perspective.

cruise ship suppliers

A basic concept of the CSC

cruise ship suppliers

A comparison of the CSC, TSC and MSC

cruise ship suppliers

A typical CSC

cruise ship suppliers

Partial flows in SC with supply agents

cruise ship suppliers

A simplified CSC

Limitations and contributions of previous CSC studies

An explanation of interview questions

Interviewees' profile

The commonalities and differences between the CSC to the MSC and the TSC

The interview analysis results

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Acknowledgements

The article has been partially supported by the Tasmania Graduate Research Scholarship. The authors are grateful to participants in China's cruise industry for interviews for providing valuable information and opinions. The authors also thank anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Jingen Zhou is currently a PhD candidate in Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Australia. He obtained his MEs in Maritime Technology and Logistics from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology (Japan) and Transportation Engineering from Shanghai Maritime University (China). His research areas are cruise shipping, maritime logistics, risk analysis, Automatic Identification System (AIS) data analysis and Obstacle Zone by Target (OZT).

Shu-Ling (Peggy) Chen is the head of the department of Maritime and Logistics Management, Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Australia. She holds a PhD in port management (Cardiff University, UK), MBA (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) and Bachelor in Public Finance (National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan). Her main research interests and publications focus on port management, port governance, climate change and ports, quality management of SCs and coastal shipping.

Wenming (Wendy) Shi is a senior lecturer at the department of Maritime and Logistics Management, Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Australia. She holds a PhD from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China). Her research interests include tourism demand forecast, tourism connectivity, logistics connectivity, transport economics, shipping finance and maritime risk management.

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Pacific Wine Country

Drink wine so close to the source that you could reach out and touch the grapes on a Pacific Wine Country or Coastal cruise. Befriend a local who teaches you the best way to swirl world-famous reds in Napa. Uncover new layers in a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from a tasting room near the ocean in Santa Barbara. Discover the beauty of city life as you tour San Francisco by cable car with a newfound appreciation of a perfect California Coast pour.

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Extraordinary adventures await in diverse ports, from Ensenada to Santa Barbara and  Vancouver , B.C., each rippling with indelible beauty. Rejuvenate your senses as you stroll sun-kissed beaches and sip luscious wines under the stars. Explore laid-back coastal cities and walk beneath ancient reaching branches in the Muir Woods. Watch for marine mammals with a keen eye and quick shutter finger, as the most beautiful parts of this coast are often hidden in plain sight.  Learn more about California Cruise shore excursions

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Hear celebrities from your favorite entertainment share their experiences on board select sailings in our exclusive Entertainer’s Showcase and Workshop. Meet the stars of stage, screen and music at parties, and hear behind-the-scenes tales of your favorite movie, play or album over exquisite food and drinks. Meet the actors, composers and musicians who shaped some of the most memorable media in history and learn about their careers, methods and lives.

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Get to the heart of life on the coast with locally inspired programs and partnerships. Witness fantastic displays of nature like expressive sea lions and migrating whales. Learn about colorful, historical cultures and more on our California Coast cruise.

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Do as the locals do. Princess has partnered with local experts to bring you immersive adventure off the beaten path. Dine at local hot spots hidden in plain sight. Attend events and have experiences only known through word of mouth. Listen as experts reveal California’s history, national parks and Spanish missions from a local point of view.

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Experience a new perspective of California and the West Coast on board or ashore, day or night. Learn about California from the locals who know it best and uncover the secret lives of sharks during Shark Week at Sea with Discovery at SEA. Amaze your friends after a class at the Wizard’s Academy courtesy of the California Science Center.

Sail the stars

Embark on a cosmic voyage to the heavens from our top deck through Stargazing with Discovery at SEA, developed with renowned astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi and L.A.’s famous Griffith Observatory. On this interactive guided tour, learn how to find your bearings, identify the major constellations, and hear the secrets of the stars and the legends around them.

Pacific Coast Cruise Ports and Excursions

Immerse yourself in the colorful sights and sounds of the Golden State and beyond. Locals wear the region’s signature laid-back spirit like a uniform. It’s in the sand, on the streets and in hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Pictures don’t do it justice; it has to be felt and experienced, and the best way to do so is on board a Princess West Coast cruise.

California coast cruise shore excursions

Uncover the history, natural wonders and culinary delights of the California Coast through shore excursions specially designed to show you more of the state. Inspire your mind with up-close encounters with fascinating creatures and sites on immersive Discovery™ and Animal Planet™ excursions.

Discover even more with discovery at sea

Princess has joined forces with Discovery to offer exclusive excursions and tours that are not only fascinating for the whole family, but also recommended by two of the most trusted names in world travel – Discovery™ and Animal Planet™. Hear inside stories from regional experts, and learn what it’s really like to live in each of the areas you’re visiting during your Princess California cruise.

Explore the Ports of the West Coast on a California Cruise

Highlights of things to see and do on shore

  • Astoria, Oregon
  • Ensenada, Mexico
  • Los Angeles, California
  • San Diego, California
  • San Francisco, California
  • Santa Barbara, California
  • Seattle, Washington
  • Vancouver, B.C.

Enjoy a narrated drive around Astoria, and visit the Astoria Column, view the Flavel House and many picturesque homes, hotels and neighborhoods that have been featured in movies like  The Goonies ,  Short Circuit ,  Benji the Hunted  and others. Take in the views and brews of some Astoria's finest craft beers while looking out over the scenic Columbia River.

Head south and dance to live mariachi music in the Riviera del Pacifico. Visit the oldest winery in Baja California, and enjoy the beautiful weather as you taste wines crafted from nearly ancient vines. Sample delectable dishes under beach umbrellas, and enjoy the day’s special from local street vendors. If you’d like to see one of the world’s largest marine geysers, visit the scenic peninsula of Punta Banda, home to La Bufadora.

L.A. is more than swimming pools, shopping and palm trees. It’s a world-class city that embraces its movie star good looks. Explore the star-studded Hollywood Hills. Visit the world-famous TCL Chinese Theatre’s Hollywood Walk of Fame, which features the handprints, footprints and autographs of more than 200 stars like John Wayne, Judy Garland and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson preserved in cement. Wander Olvera Street for authentic colors and tastes of Old Mexico.

Relax on a sun-soaked beach. Take a tour of the county’s thriving wineries. ‘Ooh’ and ‘aah’ over the 4,000 rare animal breeds that call the San Diego Zoo their home. Watch thrilling shows featuring bottlenose dolphins at Sea World Adventure Park. Enjoy that south-of-the-border feeling with a stroll through Old Town. Sample the nightlife – all Classic California Coast cruises stay here until 11 p.m.

You just may leave your heart in this iconic city. Home to cable cars, fog and world-class food, San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city with hip neighborhoods, parks and gardens and a relaxed atmosphere. Take a stroll down Lombard Street, the “most crooked” street in the world. Watch interesting characters flow through Union Square from a coffee shop window. Appreciate 1,000-year-old redwood trees at Muir Woods National Monument.

Nicknamed “America’s Riviera,” Santa Barbara boasts whitewashed houses draped with bougainvillea, sapphire-blue water rolling up a rocky coast and palm-lined beaches. Even with all of that beauty, wine and whales may be the stars of this charming coastal city. Journey to the quaint Danish village of Solvang for wine tasting. Step aboard a high-speed catamaran and cruise out to the glistening waters of the Channel Islands to watch whales and dolphins frolic.

At 110 years old, Seattle’s Pike Place Market is the country’s oldest continuously operated public farmers' market. It’s also home to the original Starbucks, where javaphiles toast to the legendary coffeehouse. Let your eye guide you to local art, and your nose to hole-in-the-wall eateries, along eclectic streets. Tour and sample the wines hidden away in the state’s most popular wineries’ private cellars.

If you’re looking for adventure in Vancouver, gather up your courage for a daring walk across the nearby Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge swaying 50 meters high. Stop and smell the cherry blossoms in world-famous Stanley Park, a West Coast rainforest fittingly dubbed the “Green Heart” of Vancouver. Ascend Grouse Mountain in the Super SkyRide tramway for a postcard-worthy view of the city over rolling hills of Douglas firs.

California Coast Cruise Articles and Videos

Read about the must-see attractions, unique cuisine and the West Coast’s signature style you’ll encounter on a California coast cruise.

2024-2025 California Coast Cruises

The Best of the West Coast. Learn more about California Coast cruises.

Wine Cruises for Oenophiles: Taste and Learn

If you're a wine enthusiast who'd love to explore some of the renowned wineries the continental U.S. has to offer, it's time to plan a cruise.

Tour the West Coast on a California Coastal Cruise

Though it's a single state, California makes up more than half of the West Coast in the U.S., affording it some of the most beautiful weather, Pacific coastline and destinations in the country.

Food in Vancouver: Cruise to Taste the Pacific

The influence from Asia and the Pacific makes Vancouver's food some of the best in Canada. Take a cruise from Vancouver and enjoy the flavors of the city.

Visit San Francisco on a California Coastal Cruise

Whether staying in San Francisco for a few hours or a few days, passengers on a cruise ship will be hard pressed to avoid falling in love with this quaint yet bustling metropolitan city.

Try Pacific Coast Cruises for a Quick Getaway Vacation

Need a quick getaway? Check out Los Angeles and Ensenada, Mexico, in one weekend on one of Princess Cruises' Pacific Coast cruises.

Travel, Airfare, & Hotels: Let Princess Get You There

Princess EZair® Flights

Stress-free airfare

Remove the hassle from air travel and give yourself the gift of flexibility, time and a thicker wallet with Princess EZair flights. We negotiate lower rates with the airlines, allow you to modify your flight up to 45 days prior with no penalty and protect you if your flight is late or canceled.

EZair flight quotes are available on our cruise search result details pages.

Airplane to Ship Transfer

We get you where you need to go

Let Princess pick you up from the airport and take you directly to your ship or hotel when you arrive, even if you didn't book your airfare through us. A uniformed Princess representative meets you at the airport after you've retrieved your luggage and transports you directly to your ship or hotel without you having to worry about the logistics of navigating a new city.

Cruise Plus Hotel Packages

Stay longer and relax

Extend your cruise vacation, and simplify your travel plans with a hotel stay at the beginning or end of your cruise. With a Cruise Plus Hotel Package, a Princess representative meets you at the airport and pier, transporting you to and from your hotel. The package includes the cost of your hotel stay, transportation, luggage handling and the services of the representative.

Need help planning?

Princess Cruise Vacation Planners are a dedicated resource to help you every step of the way through the planning process of your cruise vacation. And the best part is, they are absolutely FREE!

Cruise deals & promotions

Find our top sales, deals, partnerships and promotions for our destinations all in one place. We run promotions throughout the year and sometimes run sweepstakes where you could win prizes!

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Mexico cruise destinations.

Discover rich heritage and bright flavors on a Mexico cruise.

Hawaii Cruise Destinations

Catch the aloha spirit the moment you come aboard a Hawaii Cruise.

Caribbean Cruise Destinations

Walk along sun-kissed beaches in laid-back style.

Behind the scenes: How this Carnival cruise ship galley serves thousands of meals a night

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"Behind the Scenes” is a five-part series focusing on the inner workings of the travel industry and how those impact the consumer’s final product. If you'd like to contribute to our future reporting and share your experience as a source, you can click here to fill out this quick form .

On any given night, Pacific Restaurant on Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship is a hub of activity. On multiple evenings during a recent sailing, guests lined up at the entrance to one of the main dining rooms on Carnival Jubilee , which gave way to a two-deck space with ornate, twinkling light fixtures and soaring white columns.

But a windowless room several decks below is where the real action happens.

The ship’s main galley, lined with metallic counters, stoves and ceiling panels, cranks out 15,000 dishes per night on average. The kitchen – one of 18 galleys overall – supplies multiple meals, but dinner is its busiest time.

“It's not a small operation by any means, especially on this class of ship,” Vivek Menon, the ship’s Food and Beverage Director told USA TODAY on board. Here’s how they do it.

Ever wanted to ride an airport bag belt? You can't, but we can show you where they go.

Behind the scenes with Disney's baby elephant: 'We don't force our animals to do anything'

How does a cruise ship galley work?

Lots of planning happens before meals ever hit guests’ plates. Food orders are placed around two weeks in advance and loaded onto the vessel on turnaround days, said Menon, whose food and beverage team includes just under 900 members (Jubilee can accommodate more than 6,000 guests).

The ship's galley staff cooks roughly 5,000 pounds of whole chicken, grills around 5,000 pounds of strip steak and bakes approximately 600 loaves of bread every week.

One morning in late February, fish was thawing in a walk-in refrigerator the size of a small bedroom on deck 3, two decks below the galley. According to a label on its exterior, a nearby freezer housed ice cream, while another room was filled with boxes of cruise essentials like Grey Goose Vodka and Crown Royal whiskey.

Chefs then place orders with the vessel’s storeroom team two days before they need the ingredients. “Pre-prep” – such as trimming and marinating chicken breasts – takes place a day beforehand, with more prep following on the day of service, though the time required varies.

Those chicken breasts, for example, might be prepped an hour prior to service. By contrast, “Prime rib cooks for six hours,” Menon said. “A short rib braises for 12 hours, so obviously that has a huge lead time. So, it depends on the dish.”

Then it’s showtime. The galley provides food for an average of 4,000 people a night between Pacific Restaurant and the ship’s other dining room, Atlantic Restaurant.

Orders start trickling in at around 5:45 p.m., but the crew is ready. Chefs are given a head count at the beginning of the evening, at peak time and near the end of dinner.

For example, Menon said, “If we’re cooking 1,000 fish for early dining, 1,000 filets, the counts are spread out in such a way that in the first 15 minutes, the cook is running around 200 ahead of count, because these counts are very quickly going to catch up,” Menon said.

As orders slow down, they narrow the gap and reduce output accordingly. “At the end of dinner service, you have very little left,” Menon said. “By the time it's nine 9, 9:15, we’re already down one or two, four or five pieces, depending on the volume we're setting up.” Guest flow differs each evening, however.

At the beginning of a cruise, the crew starts logging how much of a given item is used on that sailing – down to details like how guests want their steak cooked – which allows them to prepare more or less as needed.

Does food go to waste?

Tracking guest preferences is about more than just providing good service. The line has paid close attention to what goes uneaten as part of efforts to reduce food waste. “We looked at what the guests don't like, what's coming back on the plate,” Menon said. Then they can make changes.

Carnival also introduced QR-code menus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has made it easier to tweak menus (though they have printed ones as well). Other measures, such as adding a charge for once-included room service in 2022, have helped the line move closer to those aims, too.

“Before (when) you walked down a corridor, every second cabin, you're going to see a plate outside with some things half-eaten because it was complimentary,” Menon said.

The line generated nearly 2.5 pounds of food waste per person around five years ago. Now that number is about 1.5 pounds. (Read more about how cruise lines have been working to reduce food waste here .)

What is Carnival’s Chef’s Table?

If guests want to peek behind the culinary curtain, they can see the galley for themselves. Carnival’s Chef’s Table experience features a tour and a multi-course dinner for between 12 and 16 people, according to the line’s website .

The sleek dining room that hosts the dinner on Jubilee was tucked deep inside the galley space, giving passengers up-close views of the kitchen. The menus – which can’t be found elsewhere on board – vary from ship to ship but have included items like knotted parmesan herb brioche, black-garlic cannelloni, a “lamb trilogy” (roasted, broiled and confit) and more.

When is the best time to take a cruise? We broke it down by region.

The experience is available on all Carnival ships and ranges from $90-$150 per person, depending on the vessel and the menu. Passengers can make reservations online after booking their cruise.

The reporter on this story received access to this sailing from Carnival. USA TODAY maintains editorial control of content.

What behind-the-scenes aspect of travel would you like to know more about?

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at [email protected].

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The core of The Apollo Group business is logistics and hotel services through affiliate companies that serve the biggest brands in the cruise ship industry.

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Apollo is recognized the world over for its culinary achievements by prestigious groups such as Onboard Services Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler and Porthole Cruise Magazine.

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  8. How Does a Mega Cruise Ship Source, Store, and Prepare All That Food?

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  10. Cruise ship suppliers: A field study of the supplier relationship

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  18. Behind the scenes: How this Carnival cruise ship galley serves

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