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| Reliability |
Real-time, always available |
Data easily becomes "stale" |
| Standardized |
Central, standardized format fosters operational efficiency |
No centralization, no standardized format |
| Convenience |
Update one page |
Send multiple emails to every vendor in every port. |
| Over bookings |
Automatic text message / email notification if tours are oversold |
Vendors often don't know a tour is oversold until they are on the pier with the guest, limiting their ability to correct the problem. |
| Under bookings |
Guests booked on undersold tours can be redirected to another tour ahead of time. |
Vendors are faced with losing money on an undersold tour or turning guests away on the pier. |
| Real time? |
Octopus Beta requires manual entry of counts. Octopus can be integrated with ticketing software to automatically update when tickets are sold. |
Email only provides snapshots of ticketing activity. |
| Scheduling |
Scheduling utility allows vendors to accept proposed tours/availability which are added to their online schedule. Conflicts between cruise lines are automatically flagged so they can be rectified. |
Spreadsheets are manually reviewed. Human error allows for duplicate bookings. |
| Shore ex bandwidth/turnover |
All information is quickly communicated from one page. Standardized interface ensures continuity of communication in the event of shore ex turnover. |
Shore-ex spends large amounts of time generating multiple emails and searching for information. Any turnover disrupts continuity of communication. |
| Time zone differences |
Differences in ship time and local time are shown to ensure everyone is operating on the same clock. |
Different ships which observe different time zones create complexity which can hinder on-time departure. |
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| Optimized Excursion Management |
Communication is the lifeblood of the cruise ship – tour provider relationship. Change is ever-present in this relationship: from schedule, to weather, to availability, to ticket count. Both parties are tasked with meeting the demands of today while planning for tomorrow.
Modern cruising has grown in scale to the point where e-mail, paper, and notes are not up to the task of managing this relationship. When faced with the sheer volume of vendors with which a single ship interacts, the task of timely and effective communication becomes almost impossible. As a result, the very act of managing the relationship between cruise lines and land-based tour operators encumbers valuable, limited resources.
The solution to this problem is EIS, a secure, easy-to-use, fault tolerant interface where both parties have visibility to the same set of real-time data. Octopus ensures continuous, reliable, and accurate communication of schedules, tickets sold, and date-specific messages. |
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| It also serves as a single, organized archive for past information and a scheduling utility for the planning of future tours. More than anything, Octopus is a portal that removes the barriers which make email and manual scheduling inefficient, thereby negatively impacting revenue generation and guest satisfaction. |
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