On the future of Cruise Experience: Fun In Health.
New personal norms
Ask yourself, for those who experienced some or more brutal level of confinement recently,… how may of us would have changed habits, and which one of our new habits did we like after all?.
How many of our new habits are we willing to “live with”?;
Which of our newly discovered habits opens an opportunity to demand a new experience and convert it in our new default?,… not quite the new norm, perhaps the new personal norm, just a personal default…
And I am here mostly thinking about the world of cruise industry, or spending your holidays on a cruise, on a ship.
And this questioning relates to everything in our life from now, as we build who we are every day, with our personal norms.
Health for Business, Health for Fun
Priotitising health sounds like a great proposition for the cruise industry; a business where without health there is no value for customers. Health becomes prerequisite of fun, the Invisible forgotten outcome customers would welcome in every minute of every day onboard a cruise ship, and of every day of their cruise holiday experience.
Health on board, health on land, health on each individual around you, health over every second of your holiday; so you can enjoy your cruise experience. What a demanding new value proposition!
The Cruise Experience starts with your own feeling of being healthy to enjoy and the certainty you are going to be kept healthy all through the experience. Is this offering really possible anytime soon under current pandemic?
And yet, cruise industry‘s ”business health” may hinge on the ability to secure humans’ health throughout the experience. Human Health, never so important for business, always so important for having human most fun.
Is cruise industry changing habits? and the way business is conducted?, and the model that secures profitable growth?, and is it adapting to the new way to create fun? Does it have to? Or else, is it enough to just wait for when the pandemic is controlled by several vaccines? Would customers then revert to who they have always been,… to old habits? How many of them will? How many of new ones will become same as the previous ones?
The World is Changing
Of course, I think it is entirely possible that cruise industry returns to a “business as usual” scenario, where only customers who hold their “I am duly vaccinated” proof will share the onboard experience, mingling with others, sharing fun socialising with strangers, having fun with own family and friends, sunshine lovers, relax seeking, adventurous fun crowds,… feeling good kind of people. A new “business as usual” scenario in the making.
And yet, the question is what percentage of last few years loyal customer base would join a new “business as usual” scenario? And equally interesting, how many of the customers the industry targeted to attract to their mega projects would be there now, feeling exactly the same as before, being the same kind of demanding customer as planned before?…. I really don’t have an answer to this question, and my personal feeling is that such new customer market is already different now, even before signing for the experience again,…. for the experience planned before this pandemic might attract different people from now on.
Because the world is changing, and with social media, and all media, and more media driven by commercial and political interest, we, the customers and consumers, can make our decisions faster, including changing our minds. Changing our minds, one of the key decision trends of the new XXI Century,… we are changing our minds, our habits, our values, and we make the world change. There is no stopping to this trend. The World is Changing. So could the cruise experience change.
A waiting game or a “go for it” golden chance?
Who knows? Are humans easy to predict? I feel we are not!
The waiting game is always on the cards, only that this time I am sure the waiting is an active activity. It is also the game of adapting to appeal again to customers when we are all back to feeling confortable socialising, because we can manage the risks that are inherent with living life, because we would have increased our perception of health safety, thanks to tangible remedies that are readily and affordably available,… because some of us will go back to live life exactly like before this pandemic.
Yes, the world might not shift radically at massive speed after this pandemic. It is however the strength of the “social virus-behaviour” it would have been born in people what can swing demand. This could create a new business model for cruise, the model of delivering a new social experience of fun and health, combined. This could be the new Cruise Experience. Has a golden chance to deliver Fun and Health emerged? I believe it could, when we create it.
The best way to predict the future is to create it
It is whether there is a golden chance to create a new experience for cruise. I believe there is.
Digital to the rescue
On one hand, there is enough array of digital technologies and digital savvy brains in our current world ready to get combined to minimise risk to human health when onboard cruise ships that are full of humans talking, at times shouting, sharing, having fun in community gatherings, relaxing.
When digital technologies collect pertinent data, structure it appropriately for the desired valuable outcome we seek, create the right insights, and distribute the right size bits of information to the people who need to act on it, at real time, every time, … and when there are real-time ways to secure that humans take action when the action is on them,… when all this happens we are moving towards minimising risk to people’s health very greatly. If we then create the environment where most of the critical actions that secure our health are let to be taken by digital brains, not by humans, and we have secured our trust in such digital brains, we then move towards zero risk to humans’ health for the risks where we have digitised our decisions and actions.
Creating digital pockets of enhanced health safety for passengers on cruise ships would become one component of a new model, delivering solutions to making such onboard experiences most preferred,… new customer’s best choice. The Cruise Experience would benefit greatly from this, for the onboard experience part of it.
New cruising model for creating a new future
Probably it is not just about embarking into a safe bubble with your equally safe other passengers and that’s it,… or perhaps it is, for when all that is demanded for a holiday is provided onboard a ship: call it Cruise Gambling Experiences, Theme Park Experiences, High Shopping, Dining and Entertaining Experiences,… without touring. Perhaps this drives to creating themed-cruises on themed-designed ships, the only place where cruise holiday would happen, on this model.
How safe would be the at Port, on land, at the emblematic cities designed to be discovered by tourists,… I guess it would vary, from country to country, or even from location to location, and eventually healthy locations will be back to the holiday experience plan.
The thing is whether there is time and space now to create that new experience, while waiting for social confidence on health to get back to a level that allows authorities to allow people to mingle like before anywhere. My personal view is that even if there’s certainty that the new norm would return normal business conditions to this industry, there is also an opportunity to create an experience that will co-exist with the norm. While co-existing, and following Darwin’s saying related to the survival of the Species, one business model might become more fit for success than the other,… opportunity is always there.
New business model when we Design for Fun In Health
In the meantime, we can design for new ways of having fun in the cruise experience while at the same time we secure being always healthy. An experience for those who view cruise differently same as ever, and still know they need to feel something else when they return or start enjoying it after the pandemic. Return and enjoy it, having fun and being healthy.
Experience fun in health. I am thinking on how possible it is to Design the Ship, Design the Destination and Design the Journey, for having great fun while preserving great health, from the beginning of the experience and until you are back home from an unforgettable treat you gave to yourself in deciding to experience cruise in the new 21st Century.
Designing the Ship
It is about designing the human quarters of the ship, more than what the ship is from a naval architecture and marine engineering point of view. It is about designing the ship for humans‘ use, in fun, in health, all the time.
I believe such ships will be ultra respectful with the environment to start with; not that this is pre-requisite for achieving a design for health. However, from a customer experience emotional point of view, it is far greater to know that the ship takes care of the Planet’s health by design, as best as possible, before starting to feel healthy onboard as humans. It is a nice touch, and it is about making meaning, a statement of who you would like to attract as customers to live such experience,… and a statement of who the users are,… that’s my thought. Humans must take health care of the Planet fast, so our Planet can be healthier for all of us in return. So the Most favoured ship of the future for humans as users will be “Green”, very much, for sure!
The human quarters will be designed for health-caring of people, everyone onboard, passengers having fun and crew members and service squads having fun servicing customers, all in health. The way to care about health would be by minimising the risk of humans contaminating the ship and of contaminating others,… yes, by keeping humans on check, without humans noticing. As I mentioned before, digital technologies could help enormously to achieve this key goal. My believe is that in the more distant future we will be taking advice from the Artificial Intelligence before we ask another human for help.
Ship accommodation designs could change in such a way that a new kind of cruise ship might emerge, a ship that will be used differently, perhaps with niche areas for niche groups for niche entertainment purposes in a book per use model; perhaps with flows based on health management data that will link with how humans will use the ship; perhaps with share bubbled social spaces,… we should imagine this future.
A new design would become similar in look to what we see today and radically different in the way it is used compared to today. The design of new User Interfaces would matter the most in order to create fun in health.
A new exciting world of opportunities for brave entrepreneurs!
Designing The Destination
Well, where are you going to take this ship in order to keep the promised Fun In Health?
Obviously, today there are many destinations where such promise could become broken for returning passengers boarding after a great tour of this particularly less safe city,… what an opportunity to radically change the physical destination and opt for places where there is a health bubble easily replicated, as healthy as our Green Fun-In-Health Ship environment.
You can start thinking about paradise islands, inhabited small locations, small communities where health is being great all through this pandemic, locations where it is easier to secure a healthy experience,… of course many people will come up with presenting the usual barriers to this, like lack of infrastructure to disembark or even get access with large cruise ships, etc, etc,…. there would always be a range of locations that will qualify to become safe destinations and that with some additional imagination would also allow passengers to disembark safely. As long as there is sufficient demand, the possible locations do exist.
Would this represent an “unusual different touring experience”?, Yes, it certainly would. And it is the niche that could innovate the new model for the industry, just to start with. There’s nothing like experimenting with the few willing to visualise the giant value lying ahead of our imagination! Starting up is a great activity for the changing world.
Designing The Journey
And the journey is not only the physical one, that it is also to be designed, but the emotional journey for everyone involved.
When you feel good from the moment you live home, throughout the process of getting into your magnificent cruise ship, and while onboard with equally good-feeling people, and when touring into amazing destinations you would never thought reachable, or even existing, and when still feeling good when having no-plan,… because all is designed to care for your having Fun In Health,… this could start being a great journey.
Digital technologies and human brains jointly creating the future. I believe this future is possible if we create it.
Culture is King
I am fascinated by Culture, by the many different believes from people, in day to day individual life, in societies, in businesses,…. culture is a treasure. Great culture achieves anything that is desired when the focus is right and constant. I value culture diversity and diverse human collaboration, a huge force. And a huge source of diverse demand.
Cruise Experience is different for different cultures. Each culture will shape the experience, by defining people’s liking, aligning it with values, so the experience provides what people need to feel the Fun, within the Health they value and care about, within their culture and diversity boundaries. Every Great Experience will share one commonality: it will create synchronicity with humans, with their culture. Every Cruise Experience designed to enter in full sync with current culture will be great for user humans.
New Habits Drive New World.
What do you believe will make cruise experience unique and valuable for you? How would you like it to be? How could it be?
What new habits are emerging where you are? And with you? That will shape your world, our world,…
It is our new time. A new 21st century.