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Cruise line sites loose to online agencies
Online travel agencies outperform online cruise sites across the board for customer experience, according to a new study.
Online agencies captured four of the top five positions in the study’s ranking.
“Expedia and Royal Caribbean are the clear early leaders in the burgeoning competition for customers researching and booking a cruise online,” said the study released by Keynote Systems, a business performance management service company.
“Expedia and the other online travel agencies provide a significantly better online experience for the customer than do the cruise Web sites themselves, with the exception of Royal Caribbean which is clearly ahead of the other supplier sites,” added Bonny Brown, director of research and public services for Keynote.
She said consumer’s biggest frustration was the necessity to compare multiple travel services.
The second biggest frustration for consumers: price transparency.
“Consumers expect prices to be clearly stated and explained, yet the majority of cruise sites do a poor job of doing so,” the study found.
The study found one in four of the 2,000 participants found it difficult to determine the total price of a cruise online.
Ms Brown said that Royal Caribbean was the only cruise line to overcome hurdles to be rated highly by consumers.
“Their Web site provides visuals and a level of interactivity that gives consumers an actual taste of what the cruise experience would be like,” she said.
Report by David Wilkening
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