Without doubt it’s been a tragic week for the cruise industry with the capsizing of the Costa Concordia. With all the media reporting it seemed likely that bookings and enquiries would suffer. With 150,000 searches for deals this past week alone, including a high proportion for March departures, cruise seems to be weathering the storm, reports cruise.co.uk, UK’s online cruise…
Without doubt it’s been a tragic week for the cruise industry with the capsizing of the Costa Concordia. With all the media reporting it seemed likely that bookings and enquiries would suffer. With 150,000 searches for deals this past week alone, including a high proportion for March departures, cruise seems to be weathering the storm, reports cruise.co.uk, UK’s online cruise travel agent.
In the two weeks before the incident, visitors to www.cruise.co.uk were up on the previous year with 100,000 unique visitors, making 157,000 searches for cruise based information. In the seven days since the incident there has been roughly the same number of hits, with searches for cruise ship videos up a whopping 150%, with over 45,000 videos viewed. The Company has seen a significant increase in people who want to see what Costa is all about too, through its customer videos and reviews.
Up to 13th January, The big UK and American brands such as P&O accounted for 25% of the clicks to the site followed by Royal Caribbean with 21% and Cunard third with 9% – the three have over 55% of the enquiry market. In addition to specific brand enquiries, 24,000 cruise reviews were queried on the web site in the first two weeks– showing real life experiences. These real life reviews including pictures and video show that once again consumers look to people like themselves for real opinions and guidance on what‘s best.
Even after the Concordia incident, this past week showed only a slight change with 25% of searches on P&O and 20% on Cunard. A welcome sign for the Carnival Corporation and its UK based operation and showing that these brands are still strong in the market place.
As an indicator to the strength of the market, over the last three weeks, 70% browsers were looking for cruises in the first seven months of the year with both March and July showing the biggest percentage number of hits – possibly showing the market is being led by late bookers and those who need to go during the kids’ summer holidays.
Commenting on the results, Seamus Conlon, Managing Director of cruise.co.uk said, “Like everyone in the industry we’re truly shocked and saddened by the Costa Concordia accident last week but already our figures show that the accident is having little or no effect on bookings for the key brands.
“Early January showed that P&O, Cunard and Royal Caribbean are still top with British browsers but we’ve also noticed that the interest in the luxury brands such as Seabourn, Holland America and Oceania has risen 100% over this time last year.
“River Cruising is up 50% s showing strong growth with more interest in both the specialist operators and the less well known destinations such as the Far East and Russia. This could be as result of the increased interest from the press over the past year. ”
Tatiana is the news co-ordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes to monitor the hundrends of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skim the most important according to our strategy. She holds a Bachelor degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
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