Like all facets of the travel market, the cruise and ferryboat sector faced its own special set of difficulties during the pandemic. As healing continues to embed in across the field, brand-new technologies are becoming a crucial game changer. For the cruise and ferry sector specifically, retail software services that incorporate retail sales, dining establishment management, services, reservations, and reservations in one point of sale (POS) system have the capability to improve and streamline operations, harness brand-new customers, and produce exceptional customer and staff experiences.
SkiftX spoke to LS Retail’s Joerg Schmikale, lead expert for travel retail, Jakob P. Nickelsen, solution architect, and Johann S. Sveinsson, senior designer, about the benefits that integrated retail software application can give the cruise and ferry industry and why they’re needed now especially.
Here, we explore five ways the right retail tech can offer a much better cruise and ferryboat experience for both guests and employees, based upon our discussion.
A Single Source of Truth
Information is upgrading the method the travel industry plans and operates. The value of having the ability to more precisely forecast customer habits responsively in a vibrant, fluctuating market, as well as to much better understand consumer needs and preferences, can not be overstated.
For the ferryboat or cruise company, there are big advantages in having all data– client loyalty, retail sales, dining establishment consumption, reservations, and registrations– within one system. A single POS system allows the company to see the big photo. Instead of having various information points spread throughout various databases, they have one point of truth for info on sales and guests across the entire enterprise.
Perhaps the single most significant benefit is the possibility to have all that pertains to a journey integrated together under a single guest identity. This suggests the ticket, a supper reservation on the ship, a massage, along with other add-ons off the vessel, might all be tied to a single booking. This unified view enables operators to much better understand their guests and make more accurate decisions around getting, merchandising, and staffing, which can help reduce expenses.
Sustaining Consumer Loyalty
Among the crucial shifts in the industry of late has focused on client commitment. With legacy programs and incentives no longer as prevalent, services have actually been reassessing how to attract and incentivize future customer commitment.
With a unified system throughout the whole offering, brand names can offer consumers a commitment card or login which lets them gather and spend points throughout all of the shops, restaurants, and services the brand name offers, both on board and off the ship.
For instance, one of LS Retail’s clients is a leading North European ferry and cruise operator, which utilizes a single POS system for the restaurants and stores on board the vessels, as well as for border shops and food services at the ports, which range from hot dog stands and wine shops to cafés and other retail outlets. Consumers can gather and spend points across all of these entities and get the exact same brand experience throughout.
And by having all customer information in one database, consisting of commitment status and past purchases, this operator can get a clear and complete view of their consumers. They can track client habits– for example, comprehending how frequently guests return, what routes they book, how much they spend, and what they usually purchase throughout the whole company, whether on or off the vessel.
Having one system also allows operators to quickly prepare and enact marketing campaigns. For instance, a ferry line LS Retail deal with recently chosen to run a last-minute project where they chose 15,000 customers and offered them free commitment points if the customers booked a ticket on particular paths within 14 days. By utilizing a single system to manage loyalty, sales, and client data, they might quickly prepare and execute such a project and track its success.
Making Jobs Easier for Staff Members and Staff
In addition to enhancing the guest experience, these combined systems make life simpler for staff members too. Staff on the vessels can search for consumer details and bookings more quickly. Workers in the main offices can access the data they require in one place, and no longer need to look for info or make modifications throughout various interfaces and databases.
With tourists’ plans still based on last-minute modifications, operators continue to face a high threat of cancellations. A unified solution reduces the problems and manual work that cancellations can cause: If a guest cancels their trip, the system immediately cancels all of the add-ons, too. The services that were cancelled then ended up being instantly readily available and can be instantly resold, limiting both risk of mistakes and loss of revenue.
Consistent Connection, Ensured
Though it’s definitely ‘in the same boat’ as other industry gamers recovery-wise, the cruise and ferryboat sector faces its own unique challenges, many of which can be eased through the welcome of merged software solutions.
For instance, losing web connection is a common occurrence on ferryboats and cruises, as the vessels don’t have a landline and the satellite link is not always fast enough, or can have gaps. This indicates that POS and sales solutions need to be able to work offline. Operators also require a really steady system, and not every innovation option can provide that.
Using a tech option that can ensure a steady, distributed environment, in addition to an extremely reliable data duplication system that can combine the cloud with offline capabilities, is essential. This ensures that operators can always serve clients on board– even when there is no web connection– which all data remains aligned throughout the business, from what items are offered, to what items are readily available, to the number of points a faithful customer gathered with their purchase.
Lined Up with Future-Forward Trends
The cruise and ferryboat sector is no island, and the modifications and transformations it deals with dovetail with those of the wider industry. For instance, the merged, contactless, and self-service tech developments that are emerging in other particular fields are becoming important throughout the cruise and ferry experience.
Lining up with wider trends, both operators and visitors are searching for contactless, self-service experiences that are seamless, quicker, more automated, and reduce the need for physical interaction. Unified systems make this much simpler. For instance, with a single solution that covers different services on the vessel, a customer might include a supper reservation to their reservation when they purchase their ticket online. If the business uses a single guest identity, their booking is registered on their boarding card, so the guests can go straight to the dining establishment, scan their boarding card at a self-service maker, and be seated instantly.
This speed of service and benefit is important for all tourists, but especially for guests like truck motorists, who use the ferry passage as a rest stop. The faster these guests can be seated and served at the restaurant on board, the more time they can rest. Operators that can provide quick and smooth service will have an advantage over rivals when it comes to bring in commuters and other frequent passengers.
In travel, there is still a propensity from lots of operators to wish to take control of the visitor experience and offer the standard “all inclusive vacation.” However, modern customers want to customize experiences to their tastes and have control at their own fingertips.In the future, automated self-service experiences that empower customers will become the standard. Guests will significantly be able to manage, preserve, and change their own reservations on their own, instead of needing a staff member to do it for them. A big-picture, strategic understanding of the advantages of a combined software option will also become more common over the next few years. Numerous operators have not yet registered the capacity of having one point of reality in regards to information analytics, forecasting, client experience, and process automation. Rather, they are typically focused on short-term expenses or are concerned about their existing IT financial investments, and don’t want to take the leap to a new way of handling their company, the HQ, and the vessels as one. But as more merchants understand that combined commerce is vital to deliver smooth experiences online and face to face,
travel operators will likewise likely see the benefits of reassessing their whole method to technology and information. This material was created collaboratively by LS Retail and Skift’s top quality content studio, SkiftX.