Cruise revenue management: cross-discipline literature review and development of an integrated cruise revenue management framework

What is it about?

The study aims to adopt a holistic approach to understand cruise revenue management (RM) practices that cover ticket and onboard revenues, through a cross-disciplinary literature review and practitioner interviews. An integrated cruise RM framework was developed. The study clarifies cruise RM functions across product planning, delivery stages and identifies ticket and onboard RM components. These are incorporated into the integrated framework, with weather and itinerary/ route attractiveness as additional considerations. Interviews revealed that there is no difference in the RM cycle pre- and during the COVID-19 pandemic, although strategies and tactics may vary in response to the market situation. This study has several contributions to knowledge development and practice. The cross-disciplinary review of cruise RM studies indicates the limited attention on this topic in any of the disciplines. The focus of research topic has also been imbalanced, mainly addressing ticket pricing, with only one paper specifically discussing onboard revenue issues. Thus, current paper reports the first study that provides a holistic view of the ‘total’ cruise RM cycle, including both ticket and onboard revenues, and developed a framework to illustrate the two sub-cycles and influencing factors.

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Why is it important?

This is the first paper to conduct a cross-disciplinary systematic literature review of cruise RM without imposing publication dates or specific databases and the first to develop an integrated cruise ‘total’ RM framework that includes ticket and onboard revenues.

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