However, even the most budget minded cruise lines often have certain classes of staterooms segregated from the general ship population marketed as luxury. For examples think of the Yacht Club category aboard MSC Cruises and the Spa Suites and Aqua Class on Norwegian Cruise Line and Celebrity Cruises respectively.  And of course you could find luxury in the grand/owners/premier penthouse/suite/villa on the oldest/smallest rust-bucket of a cruise line/ship.

So what is luxury besides the obvious physical quality aspects, service levels, amenities and other perks? Perhaps “luxury lies in the eye of the beholder” to paraphrase a common saying. Some cruisers find luxury in something small as a name brand soaps and shampoo in the stateroom bathroom. Others find luxury in butler service or ultra fine dining. Many find luxury in just being away from their typical everyday to day world.

On the other hand, luxury may mean the kind of experience had during the cruise, or even the general type of passengers on board the ship. A blue blooded banking billionaire may not fully enjoy even the best of the best penthouse suite and white glove service on a budget oriented cruise line if surrounded by belly flop and buffet crowd. Conversely, a real red blooded redneck who just won the instant scratch off lottery jackpot will likely not enjoy the the snobbery and stuffiness of a highly rated luxury cruise line.

A few years ago I clipped and saved an interesting “charticle” in Conde Nast Traveler magazine. It attempts to match celebrity personalities to the different cruise lines. Although it is a bit dated and obviously a complete generalization, it at least a good start in finding the perfect cruise line that fits your definition of luxury. Additionally it is a fun read! I have included a scanned image of the article below. Sorry that the quality isn’t the best, but it was all my poor scanner could handle.

However you slice luxury, it come down to two things: “to each his own,” and to one of the most overstated yet underrated sayings in cruising: “there really is something for everyone.”

Over the last few months, I have “favorited” a few cruise and/or travel related quotes in my Twitter account.

It seemed like a much better idea to share them here…

“Who is staring at the sea is already sailing a little.” -Paul Carvel (via @WindstarCruises)

“I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean. Through restful waters and deep commotion. Often frightened, unenlightened. Sail on, sail on sailor.” -The Beach Boys

“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” -Benjamin Disraeli (via @cruiseblog)

“The 3 most exciting sounds in the world… anchor chains, plane motors, & train whistles.” -George Bailey (via @gapadventures)

“When a man comes to like a sea life, he is not fit to live on land.” -Dr. Samuel Johnson (via @CruiseBuzz)

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” -Seneca (via @WindstarCruises)

“Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor.” – Seneca (via Azamara Club Cruises)

“The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.” – Isak Dinesen (via MyBestFareFinder)

“A turtle travels only when it sticks its neck out.” – Proverb (via EarthXplorer)

“We must continually walk toward our fears and make more of our lives.” – Lolly Daskal  (via Lolly Daskal)

“The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails.” – Joshua Slocum (via Coastal Boating)

“You could buy me diamonds, you could buy me pearls. Take me on a cruise around the world. Baby you know I’m worth it” - Alicia Keys (via @AliciaKeys)

“It is better to travel than to arrive” – Proverb (via Thinkexist)

“A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.” – Earl Wilson (via @gapadventures)

“I love to travel, but hate to arrive.”  -Albert Einstein (via @cruiseblog)

“Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain (via @cruiseJess and @HillsofAfrica)

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds on in its net of wonder forever” – Jacques Yves Cousteau (via @earthxplorer)

From time to time I will add more as I come across them.  Please feel free to add your own favorite travel or cruise quotes by leaving them in the comments section below.

Enjoy!

CruiseMuse

Instead of individually following each cruise line, you can simply follow this twitter list for convenience. Our list contains both ocean and river cruise lines from small to large. Some cruise lines are generally not marketed in North America and therefore do not have an appropriate English language twitter account. In the event a cruise line had multiple twitter accounts, the account which was most relevant to the North American marketplace was used.

• @aida_de (Germany)
• @AMAwaterways
• @American_Cruise
• @americansafari
• @ArcticCruises
• @AustalisExp
• @AzamaraVoyages
• @AvalonWaterways
• @CarnivalCruise
• @CelebrityUK (U.K. – No U.S. account found!)
• @CostaCruises (North America)
• @CruiseNorwegian (NCL)
• @CruiseWest (line ceased operations 2010)
• @crystalcruises
• @cunardline
• @DisneyCruise
• @douroazul
• @easy_cruise (line ceased operations 2010)
• @Explorer_II (Canodros Galapagos Explorer II)
• @FredOlsenCruise
• @GalapagosNetwor
• @gapadventures
• @HALcruises
• @HurtigrutenUSA
• @Iberocruceros (Spain)
• @InnerSeaD
• @LindbladExp
• @MeinSchiff_TV (for TUI Cruises, Germany)
• @MSCCruisesUSA
• @MVTrueNorth
• @Ocean_Village (line ceased operations 2010)
• @OceaniaCruises
• @POCruises (Australia)
• @pandocruises (U.K.)
• @Pandaw
• @PaulGauguin
• @ponant_cruises
• @PrincessCruises
• @Pullmantur_ES (Spain)
• @regentcruises
• @royalcaribbean
• @SeabournCruise
• @SeaDreamYC
• @ScenicTours / @ScenicCruisesUS
• @Silversea
• @starclippers
• @thomsonholidays
• @UniworldCruises
• @VarietyCruises
• @VikingRiver
• @voyageantiquity (U.K.) / @VTA_Cruise_USA (U.S.)
• @WindstarCruises

The most glaring lack of a twitter account was a North American or U.S. based Celebrity Cruises twitter account. Hey guys… if you need help, surely your big sister Royal Caribbean will lend a hand. If not, we will be more than happy to barter some social media training for a nice Mediterranean cruise!

The following cruise line had twitter accounts that were either inactive or appeared to not be legitimate:

• Hapag Lloyd Cruises

And the following cruise lines, typically smaller niche operators, had no evidence of a twitter account (same barter deal… man, the things we will do to get a free cruise!):

• Blount Small Ship Adventures
• Captain Cook Cruises
• Classic International Cruises
• Croisieres de France (France)
• French Country Waterways
• Hebridean Island Cruises
• Imperial River Cruises
• Kristina Cruises
• Louis Cruises
• Marine Link Tours
• Nomade Yachting Bora Bora
• Orion Expedition Cruises
• Pearl Seas Cruises
• Saga Cruises
• Sea Cloud Cruises
• Star Cruises
• Steps of Paul Coastal Cruises
• Victoria Cruises
• Voyages of Discovery

It is more than likely that we have missed a cruise line or typo-ed a link… please feel free to comment below and it will corrected a.s.a.p.

Copyright - SkySails GmbH & Co. KG

Could cruise ships harness the power of wind at sea to reduce their fuel consumption and environmental impact? New technology from Germany based company SkySails has been tested and is currently in use on several cargo vessels. The company states that depending on prevailing wind conditions, a ship’s average annual fuel costs can be reduced by 10 to 35 percent by using the SkySails system.

Unlike a standard sail which is attached to a fixed mast near sea level; a high performance kite is tethered to the ship and flies at altitudes of  300 to 1,000 feet in order to  capture stronger and more stable winds. Via a computer control system in the bridge, the kite maneuvers in a dynamic “figure 8″ pattern which generates 5 to 25 times more power than a conventional sails. A telescopic mast stores, launches and recovers the kite and these mostly automated processes takes from 10 to 20 minutes each.

So, can this system be implemented on a cruise ship? According to SkySails Press Coordinator Anne Staack, at the moment they do not have the capacity to work on future projects for passenger cruise ships. However, it just seems logical that the technology could be transferred from cargo to cruise ships with relative ease. After all cruise ships weigh, in deadweight tonnage, drastically less than a loaded cargo ship. Further pressing of the issue garnered some unfortunate news from Ms. Staack, “…because the system’s efficiency decreases as the speed of the ship increases. At today’s oil price, using the system for ship speeds above 18 knots is only a sensible option in exceptional cases.”

Not yet deterred, but realizing that most modern cruise ships have a typical cruising speed from 19 to 23 knots, the answer may rest upon the “exceptional” case. Additionally, the port intensive itineraries of many cruises likely excludes the majority from any cost effective benefits from the use of the SkySails system. Although the mostly automated aspect, as well as short kite launch and recovery times, conveys a sense of hope. A more probable cruise ship application might be aboard one of the regular or semi-regular trans-ocean cruise itineraries.

The Cunard Line Queen Mary 2 comes to mind first as a potential candidate with her well known and regular trans-Atlantic crossings. An average cruising speed of approximately 26 knots and a top speed near 30 knots almost certainly eliminates her from contention. Although, a friend was aboard the QM2 recently and Deputy Captain Othello had told him that the average crossing speed was more in the range of 23 knots.

The Princess Cruises Golden Princess is another possibility as she makes many a long Pacific Ocean journey from Los Angeles to Hawaii and back each year. Confirmation of her typical average speed at sea was not available as of the date of this post. However, her average cruising speed is stated at 21 knots. If similar to the QM2, and her actual average speed is a bit lower, we just might have the perfect SkySails test cruise ship!

Regardless, the technology of the SkySails system appears ripe for application or further development on cruise ships. The cruise lines, along with the cruise ship builders should work together with SkySails to make this cost saving  and environmentally friendly source of power a reality. The science and economic factors behind this system seem so readily adaptable from cargo to cruise ships that the industry may just need a nudge in the right direction.

Imagine being aboard aboard a cruise ship and watching the interesting process as the kite is deployed or retrieved. Many experienced cruisers crave the next new exciting ship or itinerary and “collect” those experiences. There are certainly quicker ways to cross the vast oceans, but sailing a kite ship for the first time would be something to brag about. Generating positive press from the environmental friendly elements as well as the wow factor would surely bolster the success of a staid or start-up cruise line, ship or itinerary.

Potentially none of the above reasons are sufficient on their own to merits to move a cruise line to take action. The bottom line is… wind is cheaper than fuel. A cruise line that can decrease their fuel costs and thereby increase profitability, or obtain a competitive pricing advantage, will likely be the trail blazer. Capitalism at it’s best.

Can you think of another cruise line, ship or itinerary that might be an ideal candidate for the SkySails system? Please post your ideas and / or comments below…

Copyright - The International SeaKeepers Society

It has been well reported that Carnival Cruise Lines will be installing hydrocarbon sensors on three of it’s ships (Legend, Miracle, and Triumph) to aid researchers in mapping the oil spill plumes and the extent of their spread. Although those ships are already equipped with a standard SeaKeeper 1000 ocean surface data acquisition system; the specific sensors required to collect hydrocarbon data have yet to be installed.

The new modules will be added to the Carnival ships by the end of August 2010, according to YSI, Inc. who will perform the installation during regular port calls.  Several hours is required to complete a new module placement, and Carnival will be funding the cost of the upgrade which is estimated at $15,000 per ship. Sister cruise line, Holland America, also has a base SeaKeeper system onboard the Amsterdam. However, there are no plans to add hydrocarbon sensors to the Amsterdam at this time. The cost for a base SeaKeeper 1000 starts at $75,000 plus an additional $10,000 annually for maintenance and calibration.

So exactly what is  The International SeaKeepers Society and what have they been doing to protect the world’s oceans? The society was formed in 1998 by a group of prominent yacht owners who were “horrified by the deteriorating conditions of the seas.” The founding members of SeaKeepers reads as a who’s who of the yachting world including recognizable names such as Paul Allen, Patricia Disney and Steve Forbes. Many of the members have installed the SeaKeeper system on their own yacht and/or donated money for installation on a research buoy, pier, or another vessel. One notable exception is Micky Arison, CEO of Carnival, who’s yachts the Sirona III and Mylin IV do not currently carry the system. Perhaps some more peer pressure is needed!

Designed to automatically monitor the desired surface ocean parameters, the SeaKeeper 1000 continuously collects data, location as well as a time and date stamp. The system takes precise scientific measurements every minute which is then transmitted in real time to researchers via satellite or other wireless communications. This allows quick mapping of the survey area including the oil spill plumes at the shelf break, in the look current, and eventually in the Gulf Stream. Click this map to see SeaKeeper satellite data transmissions for 2008. Although the Carnival ships are not passing directly in the spill, there operation will “be invaluable for establishing a baseline for future study.”

You may be asking yourself what is the value of the data obtained by SeaKeepers? First it is important to note that the data collected is provided free of charge to the scientific community as well as governmental agencies such as NOAA and the National Weather Service. In addition, the technology and architecture of the SeaKeeper 1000 system is freely licensed to those who need access to surface ocean monitoring. In general, the oceanic research community is data and resource starved; which makes the data provided critically important. The International SeaKeepers Society believes that accurate data is essential “to protect and restore the world’s oceans.”

To learn more about the Society,visit www.seakeepers.org or follow them on twitter @SeaKeepers

Copyright - Princess Cruises

aaaaah… Alaska.

While my right brain fed vicariously on the travel porn of the recent Princess Cruises social media junket; my right brain couldn’t help but wanting to analyze data and results. (RT @TripAdvisor: Travel porn is watching people do things you’ll never do in places you’ll never go.)  Certainly the sales and marketing team at Princess had some key metrics and outcomes in mind. Or maybe they just wanted to see what would stick to the “wall” and fine tune for any future efforts. At the very least they must have hoped to build awareness of their cruise tours, generate buzz on twitter, and garner some positive blog postings as to feed the SEO machine.

Gathering data and measuring results for any media campaign that doesn’t have a specific and trackable call to action is obviously difficult.  The wide social media nature of the #FollowMeAtSea experience makes this analysis especially challenging. Little insight can be obtained from the blogs themselves without access to each of the blogging participant’s private site analytic software. Princess Cruise can determine which of the blogs are referring traffic to the Princess website, but again this is closed and proprietary information. On the other hand, Twitter is a much more open system and allows for some public data mining on the hashtag.

Using tools such as What The Hashtag, Twapper Keeper, and The Archivist did provide some interesting although severely limited information. Twitter currently indexes tweets for just 7 days and will only reach back in time to 1,500 total tweets for a given hash tag or keyword. Since the cruise tour junket transpired over an 11 day period, plus several days of before and after tweeting, obtaining all of the needed data proved difficult. Twapper Keeper provides tracking and storage of tweets beyond the 7 day 1,500 twitter limit. However, an account needs to be established prior to tweeting using the hashtag to be collected.

Unfortunately, being unaware of such restrictions, I did not set up an storage/tracking account until it was almost too late. The data I collected covers the time period from June 22 to the posting date of this review. In effect it covers the latter stages of the cruise portion along with several days of post junket tweets. It does not cover any pre-junket, land tour, or early cruise twitter updates.

The primary period of the captured data set is a five day period from June 22 to cruise disembarkation on June 26. During this time frame there were approximately 1,500 tweets containing #FollowMeAtSea for an average of 300 tweets per day. Extrapolating to include the full 11 day cruise tour and adding a lower weighted 2 days on either end for pre and post tweeting provides and estimated total of 3,750 during the heart of the junket. Expanding the time frame out more days on each end, it is plausible that there were close to 4,000 total #FollowMeAtSea twitter posts generated for the entire campaign.

Nine social media participants were selected to join Princess Cruises during the cruise tour. Several of the participants had a traveling partner who also posted twitter updates using the hashtag; and these tweets are included in the above totals, but not included in the individual results below. Using the same 5 day data set, the rankings for the highest percentage of #FollowMeAtSea participant tweets are:

1. 18.6% – @earthXplorer
2. 16.2 % – @theplanetd
3. 13.8% – @RickGriffin
4. 13.4% – @CruiseBuzz
5. 11.1% – @OrlandoChris
6. 8.0 % – @BethBlair
7. 7.7% – @traveldudes
8. 5.1% – @Gadling
9. 4.0% – @Travelogged
10. 2.1% – @PrincessCruises

It is interesting that approximately 45% of all #FollowMeAtSea tweets were retweets. It is not clear how many retweets were generated by participants retweeting other participants; versus the participant’s followers retweeting to their own followers. Either way this clearly this expanded the reach of the campaign. There are a few tools to measure reach such as TweetReach, however the results are again limited by the 7 day 1,500 maximum.

Not surprising in it’s high use, but perhaps in it’s dominance, TwitPic URLs were contained in almost 25% of all #FollowMeAtSea tweets. No other image sharing service even came close to a 1% utilization rate.  Perhaps TwitPic should be considered as a perfect co-sponsor of any future social media travel junkets? I am assuming that a plethora of pictures where also posted to the participant’s blog sites and links posted via twitter updates; but this was difficult to analyze due to the use of URL shortening.

An unexpected phenomenon was the amount of tweeting amongst  the participants themselves. I do not have any empirical data to support this observation. However, the occurrences were simple banter as well as communicative in nature such as “where are you?” and “meet me at…”  It appears that twitter has excellent functionality for small close groups as well as delivering information to large wide networks.

Disappointingly observed was the apparent lack of interaction by the travel consumer via twitter. Most of the twitter based comments and questions seemed to come from travel industry people or friends and family of the participants. Hopefully there was a good deal of true consumer participation via blog comments, emails and phone calls. Better and more promotion of future campaigns to those outside of the travel community with co-sponsorships and standard media placements would greatly expand the reach and engagement.

Overall my impression is that the #FollowMeAtSea cruise tour was a successful experiment. Certainly much was learned by Princess Cruises and the social media participants. I truly enjoyed the instant gratification of the twitter updates, especially when pictures were included. In future campaigns I would like to see more use of video sharing tools like TvitVid. Of course I might be just way too into travel porn…

If you have better tools and data to share, or other feedback, please feel free to comment below.

Disclaimer: The data used for this review, by named tools and/or twitter, was incomplete; thereby the results reported in this review may or may not be accurate in part or whole.