How Can the Cruise Industry Prepare for Peak?

Like any other sector, the cruise industry has its own peak season, where interest and bookings reach their highest levels. And for anyone who’s ever had to brave a peak season, then they’ll know that it’s all hands on deck – even when you’ve prepared.

But without the proper prep at all, then you could let some huge growth and business opportunities go to waste. We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen, with some massive cruise marketing tips so you can make the most of your peak season activity.

Why do you need to prepare for peak season?

To engage new audiences

Not everyone flocking to your brand at peak time will be your target audience. With interest at a high, it’s a great time to expose your brand to fresh segments through marketing activity.

To reduce room for error

Preparing ahead of time makes sure all the bases are covered, so the more you do, the smaller the margin for error will be. We’ll go through it in more detail, but any campaigns you have planned, should be mapped out well in advance. Peak season isn’t a time for ad-hoc activity, so you’ll want to make sure every element of your campaigns has been fine tuned and ready to be deployed free from errors.

Don’t forget, you’ll have an influx of users flooding your site too, so it’s vital that you’ve done the prep to make sure it can handle large amounts of traffic as well. Errors and confusing UI will turn away the large volumes of users in droves.

To thoroughly plan marketing activity

The cross-channel marketing you have planned should be planned out and prepared well in advance. Again, ad-hoc isn’t the answer here, so you’ll need to marshal the right teams to make sure assets, content, scheduling and activity across your channels is planned ahead of time – and that it aligns with your campaign goals too.

To stand out from the crowd

Peak seasons in the cruise industry means competition will be fierce. Here’s where your research will be vital. Look to what your competition are doing (or did last year) so you can identify the gaps you can fill. By differentiating yourself, you’ll be able to stand out even when users are flicking between multiple sites.  

When is the cruise peak season?

The real answer, in all honesty, is all year round. But interest and demand for cruise holidays tend to be at their highest from late June through to August, when schools are on holiday, though the same applies for late December, early January and March through to mid-April.

So when should you start preparing for peak season? We’ve seen that most cruise businesses tend to plan 3 months before, followed by 6 months before. However, we’ve seen some organisations say that they plan 12 months ahead – as soon as the last peak period has ended.

How to prepare for peak in the cruise industry

To make the most of peak season, here are some top tips we’d highly recommend carrying out when you’re preparing.

Prepare your website

Make sure your site is working, from front to back-end. Any site, sales, or CRM integrations should be set up properly, while running your site for any bugs or errors that might affect its functions and performances at peak time is a good idea, too.

Understand your industry position

Further competitor analysis will show where you’re positioned in the market – and let you see what competitors are doing in the run up to peak. Benchmarking yourself against your peers before and after peak is an excellent way of identifying the impact of peak on certain metrics.

Brainstorm and plan your campaigns

Whether it’s specific product promotions or something more overarching, make sure you know what you want to do, what you need for each promotion, and when exactly they’re going live.

Align your team

Peak season means every cog of your business is turning. For this reason, it’s absolutely vital that teams are aligned on activity. If a customer asks about a certain promotion, but the sales team have been kept in the dark about it, then progress is going to slow. Every team needs to know what every other team is responsible for and vice versa. As for your marketing team itself, it should be aligned across each of your channels too.

Set objectives

Without objectives, your activity will be at sea. Give your activity a reason to exist by setting campaign objectives that you can measure through relevant KPIs.

Set up a reporting dashboard

Creating a campaign dashboard, which tools you use, lets you monitor all channel performance from week to week, which you can then report to the wider team. If you have heat mapping software, use it see where users are engaging – and to identify the elements that may need adjusting to improve your click through rates.

Plan organic search activity in advance

If you’re targeting particular search terms, then it’s essential that you have supporting content set up on your site so you can rank for them. Let’s say you’re pushing cruises 2 years in advance – your site should feature content in advance so it can rank for, in this instance, 2026 cruises.

Ensure your PPC strategy is optimised

One of the highest drivers of traffic, PPC activity is going to be super competitive at peak season, so make sure your PPC strategy is fully optimised, targeted at the right people in the right places, and features powerful copy to grab your share of the market.

Research any target audiences

If you’re planning to target new audiences, then make sure you’ve carried out the relevant research on them so you know what their secondary interests are, how they behave online and the channels they tend to use the most. With these insights, you can then craft fresh campaigns around them, turning them into a fresh segmentation of your existing target audience.   

Things to do during peak season

Keep an eye on real time performance

Once peak season is up and running, you’ll need to be helming your ship at all times. Monitoring real-time performance through your chosen tools makes sure that everything is working as it should, free from bugs and issues. If you do identify errors, then you’ll need to have the resource available to attend to these quick fixes as needed.

Regularly evaluate overall campaign performance

Look to your campaign pages to see if there any adjustments or optimisations that need making to the aspects that are underperforming. If you do make changes to any pages or ads, then make sure your comparing their performance side by side to dig up findings you can learn from.

Use call tracking software

An industry that still gets high volumes of calls for sales, it’s important to track these calls, as there’s some serious data you can glean from them. Tracking attribution from call data will let you know which of your channel campaigns are bringing in the most interest, and leading users to pick up the phone.

Uncover 2024 cruise industry trends in time for peak

When you’re planning out your preparation, don’t forget to pack our Cruise Trends for 2024 report. It’s got loads in the way of useful insights that you can put to use in time for peak season. Download it here…

Not sure where to start with your strategy? We can help with that! We’ll shape up an approach that connects marketing activity to company goals – a solution that translates to real commercial growth. For more information, head to the homepage or give us a call on 0345 459 0558.