Last week saw the inaugural Seatrade Cruise Virtual event take place, during which there were a number of insightful panels that took place over the 4-day running time. One such panel was entitled “IT TLC: Using IT to Protect Passenger and Crew Health”, and was moderated by theICEway’s co-founder and CEO, Ian Richardson. Here we take a look at some of the key points raised...
Heading into 2020, the cruise industry was embracing a huge trend in digitalisation as many companies, theICEway included, were exploring ways of using IT solutions to augment the passenger experience and to effectively address issues with connectivity and cyber security amongst others. Now, as we all band together in a post-COVID-19 world, the question is, how can safe operations be combined with guest experience and improved?
According to this panel the answer was, “perfectly”, with experts discussing the critical role IT will play in the future of healthcare and bio-security in cruising, and what future developments can be deployed in order to provide more stability for the industry in the face of future outbreaks.
Top Tip
For more on theICEway at Seatrade Cruise Virtual, plus exclusive updates on our own innovative products and solutions designed to help get cruise lines safely back to sea, read last week’s blog:
https://www.iceict.net/blog/theiceway-re-brand-scv
The panellists
Ian Richardson, CEO and Co-Founder of theICEway
Andreas Brynestad, Executive Vice President of SeaDream Yacht Club
Andrew Carricarte, President and CEO of Tritan Software
Luca Pronzati, Chief Business Innovation Officer for MSC Cruises
Dr. Stanislaw Schmal, Director of Data Analytics for Lufthansa Industry Solutions US
Some Key Quotes
“Back in March, when this all came to a standstill, after a few weeks of… shock… we started looking around at opportunities.”
“We did have problems… but… the good thing for us this summer is that we’ve learnt so much. My hope is that when we learn something we can also share with others.”
“One important thing in the world we live in these days is transparency… we decided to open up for not only our guests and travel partners… but anyone who wants to join to learn about how we operate, for us to share what we do with also the opportunity to give us feedback because that’s how we get better.”
- Andreas Brynestad, presenting a very positive experience against all the odds, no doubt in direct correlation to the pro-active stance clearly adopted by SeaDream Yacht Club.“We work with 95% of the cruise lines out there… what we’ve been able to do in a very short period of time is take some of the lessons that we’ve learnt and the experience that we have from the past managing things of this nature and really scaling them.”
“We’ve got some amazing clinical staff on board these ships that have just been doing a great job for many, many years.”
“[In addition to operational and communication-based elements] … you also have the compliance piece, and that varies… Some of the data protection and privacy laws can vary from member state to member state… and across the world.”
“There’s no industry better suited to manage this.”
- Andrew Carricarte, describing how Triton’s previous work in monitoring health-related issues for cruise lines, combined with the quality of their people and those on board the ships, allowed them to negotiate the many different layers involved in tackling COVID-19 monitoring.“We started thinking internally… how we could master this situation. Being one of the cruise lines that has invested massively in technology, we… revised… the operation to see how we should adapt processes and procedures to be able to go back into operation.”
“We are now in a position on the MSC Grandiosa to precisely isolate people in case of a positive case.”
“The company has developed a very structured protocol which has been… submitted and approved.”
- Luca Pronzati, revealing how MSC also managed to use the situation to better their offering through a constructive approach to using IT solutions for cruise.“In the guest sentiment study we… analysed over 2.5 millions’ [worth of] cruise-related data… including cruise-related Tweets.”
“The goal… was… to understand what… cruisers think about cruising and how it has changed over the course of 2020, and how do cruisers see the preventative measures like temperature checks, like screening and distancing.”
“Anytime cruisers were Tweeting on those topics we analysed the sentiment of that Tweet, whether it was positive or negative… The good news is that cruise-related Tweets are still positive, the cruisers talk about their wish to sail again and about their trust in cleanliness and adjusted services on the ships.”
- Stanislaw Schmal, discussing his data study on how machine learning and AI could be used to understand how people feel about the cruise industry and cruise holiday experiences moving forwards.Contact us if you would like to listen to the panel in full, and please feel free to leave your comments in the section below!
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