Love Cruise Shopping
Harding Retail is responsible for providing premier onboard retail shopping experiences across leading cruise liners such as Marella Cruises, P&O, SAGA and Virgin Voyages to name but a few.
Objectives
Love Cruise Shopping is a mobile application aimed at changing the retail experience when onboard a cruise liner.
The business wanted to shift away from the costly traditional and static forms of literature such as posters, brochures, and leaflets when promoting onboard offers to cruise travelers. They wanted to deliver a unique shopping experience through the convenience of an App, delivering time-based personalised brand promotions and offers. This would not only digitize these promotions but allow them to engage and update their travelers during the entire cruise with the use of mobile technology.
Solution
The most challenging part of the project was figuring out how to keep the various aspects of the app up to date whilst the cruise liner was at sea, with little or zero connectivity as well as working across different time zones.
During an intuitive App onboarding process, the traveller can select a number of shopping categories and brands that may be of interest to them.
At the heart of the solution is a web-based management system that allows administrators to update content on brands, events and offers and specifically target them at travellers. They can specify when these offers are made available and how they can be redeemed by the traveller. The content is then intelligently synced to the traveller device during various parts of the cruise so the content is always fresh and up to date.
Results
After much hard work, rigorous testing and positive feedback, apps for both iOS and Andriod platforms went live in July 2019.
Not only has the App enhanced the travelers’ shopping experience but the client has benefitted from getting a useful insight into their travelers. A reports area highlights key metrics showing engagement from travelers and also key performance indicators of these offers with conversion statistics. As well as long-term cost-savings over the traditional methods – they are now better informed about their travelers and when making future decisions.
