Next week, I’m off to the Bahamas for my first cruise in 10 years. Despite currently being on crutches, I’m still looking forward to the sun and fun. So last week, when I was at the WOMMA WOMM-U conference, I was interested to attend the Carnival Cruise Lines case study and see what they’re doing in this space.

As I mentioned in my write up of the presentation, I didn’t enjoy it.  But, I still thought it worth going over to check out. With cruises being an expensive proposition and no opportunity to ‘change hotels,’ it’s great to have a community out there to let you know what worked for them, what tours to take, what to look out for, etc.

From talking to a marketer from Disney Cruise Lines, their biggest challenge is getting someone to come back for a second cruise. If they get them to return a second time, then getting them to come back a third or fourth time is much easier.

Disney currently doesn’t have this kind of community support around their cruises.  I would suspect that it won’t be long before they do, especially since they already have an off-line loyalty club. The Castaway Club members will have the ability to interact which will benefit them in many ways that they may not realize until it happens - from evangelizing their product, to assisting with problems, to making suggestions for improvement, etc.

Royal Caribbean has tied their online club in directly with their off-line club, The Crown & Anchor Society.  This gives them the benefit of having a group of evangelists, but it also has the downside of being restrictive - in that you can only join the online club if you’re a member, and you can only be a member if you’ve cruised with them before.

So, while this may help them with getting a person over that 1 cruise hump, it won’t help them with getting new cruisers. What they may want to do is open the club up.  But, still have an exclusive area for C&A members.  This will help them retain the ‘exclusive’ feel and at the same time will help to pull in new cruisers.

Filed under: Social Marketing on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 by Simon Heseltine |
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